YECs - Insane or something else?

[UnrepentantSinner]

I suppose I could post a poll about this, but this issue has been done to death amongst both non-believer and religious skeptics. If you have a comment, I'd rather you put it in the context of a spectrum ranging from insanity through willful delusion to the ironic application of post-modernism that I accuse YECs of where one can "interpret" a mountain chain to be 4,000 years old, not 40,000,000 years.

The reason I raise the whole insanity issue is because of posts I've been reading in the Christian Forums Creationist sub-forum. The gist of which is a self-validating prophecy about outsiders rejecting their message summed up with references to verses that say the Cross is foolishness to non-belivers and that YECs would rather be percieved as fools than reject their literalist interpretation of Genesis.

I don't think YECs guilty of foolishness though. I think they're bordering on insanity. To look at the Himalayas and suggest that they were created 4,000 years ago during Noah's flood depsite all the geological evidence that they are millions of years old and continue to grow millimeters per year to this day because of plate tectonics isn't "foolishness," post-modernism or even willful denial of facts but insanity.

I'm at the point where I don't see much difference between a schizophrenic thinking their television is telling them to hoard newpapers and a Creationist thinking the U.S. Geological Survey is part of a grand atheist/Satanic conspiracy trying to steal the souls of Christian school children.

Am I insane for thinking these people are grasping that tenuously to the ropes of cogent mental functioning?

[Cleon]

Well, first of all I think you need to remove the "YEC" component from the equation and just look at religious fundamentalism--whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian, or Cleonist.

Once you embrace fundamentalism, believing the impossible becomes less "crazy" and more "par for the course." Religion as a whole is an irrational phenomenon; to embrace it so thoroughly that you never question, reconsider, or doubt its teachings and let it become the end-all-be-all of your existence takes that irrationality up to a new level.

So I would rephrase the question - is religious fundamentalism insane?

[strathmeyer]

I've never seen the Himalayas but I have seen the Grand Canyon, which these people also think was carved out from the flood.

I think you're question boils down to: what is the difference between stupidity and insanity? I think if somebody is brought up being taught the YEC stuff as children and they believe it, that is just stupidity. But if they are shown that they are wrong and how they are wrong but refuse to believe the truth that is insanity. As technology and mass communication advance and people everywhere receive global television and the Internet, I find it harder and harder to believe that adult YEC's just don't have enough access to the correct knowledge, and thus would label all adult YEC's as insane.

[Jimbo07]

I think you're question boils down to: what is the difference between stupidity and insanity? I think if somebody is brought up being taught the YEC stuff as children and they believe it, that is just stupidity.

Nope.

Unfortunate. If they study their lessons well, how can they be stupid? If they are brought up with garbage lessons, and learn them well, I dub it unfortunate. :(

If they are then shown counter evidence and don't have the ability to properly integrate it, then they have either not learned how to think critically or are genuinely stupid. :(

If they understand it, integrate it, but subsequently dismiss it, they are bordering on insanity. :boggled:

If they understand it, integrate it, but publicly reject it in order to further their agenda, they are malicious, and amongst the worst kind of scum, equatable to faith healers, murderers and anyone else who perpetuates crimes against their fellow humans. :mad:

[ChristineR]

I spent some time thinking about the Grand Canyon, as I do know a gentleman who believes it was carved out by the flood. First of all I considered that floods do not leave behind anything remotely canyon-like. But then I thought about it and decided that if your flood were in the form of a gigantic high-pressure hose you might get a canyon out of it. Later I found that some YEC do in fact claim that holes opened in the ground and water sprayed out. Okay then, arrange the hydraulics just right, somehow drain the canyon without getting the whole thing underwater...well I guess it could work.

At this point I just threw my hands up in despair. You can always resort to these sort of miracle outs. There are hundreds of problems with the scenario, but you can always say "it could have if..." and just move on to a new set of problems.

True believers can never be convinced. All the prophecy in the Bible is 100% accurate--it's just not all been fufilled yet, that's all. Just because there's no historical or archeological record of an army drowning in the Red Sea doesn't mean it never happened. And on and on.

When we watch a magician saw a woman in half we know he isn't really cutting up anyone because we know unequivocallly that you cannot cut someone up and stick them back together. Therefore we can reject the evidence that she was in fact sawed in half and find the alternate explanation. Fundies are doing something similar.

Why do they stick to their beliefs that religious facts are unequivocal despite massive evidence to the contrary? Probably because they have considerable evidence that God does exist. The human brain seems to be wired to find patterns that aren't there, sense presenses that don't exist. People will tell you that of course their prayers are answered all the time--despite the fact that a simple statistical test can tell them they're wrong. People will tell you that God speaks to them, despite the fact that God seems to be completely inconsistent in His messages.

Just my two cents.

[Scot C. Trypal]

To me, it seems it’s a matter of what a person wants, not as much their insanity or stupidity.

Fundamentalists want something really really bad, and the reasonable steps to get it look like insanity to outsiders (atheists and particularly fundamentalists of other religions). Some come up with really intricate ways of explaining away evidence, and that’s what they have to do to get what they want, the notion that a particular set of ideas are true, unquestionably true.

You simply won’t convince such a person by presenting evidence, because evidence is not the prime importance in the argument. Observable facts are just steps or barriers on the way to a larger goal.

If a pejorative is to be used against such folks, I think it should be ‘selfish’. Fundamentalist and fanatics (or bigots of any stripe: left, right, religious, or not) fight to make what makes them happy seem true. It’s nobler and far less self-centered to fight to find what the truth is about our shared world; then go on to learn to be happy with what you find.

And aren’t most all humans guilty of this at one time or another? This is a (most all the time) beneficial example of fanaticism, but consider what parents will do for their children, and not for any other person, just because they have a set of ideas about a role they have with that particular human. I’d dare say most would be killed or kill to protect their kids and will sacrifice near all their immediate happiness for their sake. Questioning that bond to a parent is often taken as something near heresy. It even leads some parents to deny the truth about their kids (IMO inadvertently harming the children). All that may look crazy to a childless outsider, but it’s what it often takes to uphold a set of ideas that many consider personally and vitally important.

[Lamuella]

it's a question of outer reality conflicting with inner reality.

People always react badly to something conflicting with what they believe in their hearts to be true. You'll find it in every debate imaginable. Let's say that two people are debating the political legacy of Bill Clinton, and one of these people really likes Clinton while the other hates his guts. They will be able to take the exact same evidence and construct two diametrically opposed pictures of the same man. This is because both of them will be to some extend ignoring, discounting, or ameliorating that which does not conform to what they know in their hearts to be true. Usually, stubbornness in the face of overwhelming evidence doesn't last for too long. Most people are able to make their inner reality conform to some degree with the outer reality without too many quick gear changes. However some people are so convinced of their inner reality that they will do all sorts of mental acrobatics to make it tie together with outer reality. Young Earth Creationists are mainly people who know in their heart of hearts how the world is, and feel the need to interpret the evidence in ways that fits their existing worldview. Everyone is guilty of this behavior to some degree, but YECs are further along this path. Holocaust deniers exhibit the same behavior, not that I'm trying to suggest any kind of equivalence between the two groups.

[hgc]

I spent some time thinking about the Grand Canyon, as I do know a gentleman who believes it was carved out by the flood. First of all I considered that floods do not leave behind anything remotely canyon-like. But then I thought about it and decided that if your flood were in the form of a gigantic high-pressure hose you might get a canyon out of it. ...Pleistocene floods and the Columbia River Gorge. Yeah, the gorge was already there (no help for YEC'ers), but the floods did some carving!

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Washington/ColumbiaRiver/geo_history_gorge.html

[zakur]

"I've been reading and posting to talk.origins (http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins?hl=en) since 1991. Before then my opinion was that creationists were sincere but misguided individuals. Now it's my opinion that creationists are superstitious mental defectives being duped by a cadre of moral degenerates."
- Herb Huston, 4/14/2000

[FrankP]

I don't put these beliefs down to stupidity or insanity, but to a willful attitude towards scientific or worldly truth. The fundamentalist prefers a closed, simplistic and false universe of thought, because it feels safer. They see ignorance as blissful.

Under science and a sceptical outlook, most significant questions remain open. There are always more areas of research. We don't know exactly how to reconcile quantum mechanics with gravity. We can't always cure disease. Today's scientific knowledge is in some cases tomorrow's forgotten theory. Or sometimes it endures and remains an accepted truth. Our world (the real world) is more complicated. Furthermore in the moral sphere we accept that there may be no absolute answers.

It's all too much for some people. The complexity and responsibility is frightening. The fundamentalist takes smug refuge in final and correct answers. The Canyon dates from the flood. Anything is possible with God. The KJV says it so its true. The Bible even explains that Yahweh has hardened the unbeliever's heart and that's why we won't see the truth. The end times are coming. There are absolute answers and a future plan for the universe, but luckily finite human beings don't have to work it out, it's in the hands of Jesus Christ.

Then you can close your mind and stop making the effort to work stuff out for yourself.

[jimlintott]

I think that religous fundamentalism is a mental illness. I find it a bit wierd that if Napolean talks to you you are crazy but if god talks to you, you have instant credibility, in certain circles. I believe the reason that society at large doesn't see fundamentalism as mental illness is that suddenly you would label a certain group of people, who now enjoy credibility, as insane. This would mean that people had been giving credibility to crazy people. It would also tend to label the pope, the clergy, the ministers, rabbis and whatever as mentally ill. I also think that many marginally religous people look longingly at the fundamentalist and wish they could achieve that level of enlightenment.

Being a YEC is a symptom of being fundamentalist, being fundamentalist is a symptom of mental illness but I think we are a long way from generally recognising that.

I should add that I am in no way qualified to diagnose mental illness but the fundies sure look crazy to me.

[Freethinker]

It's all too much for some people. The complexity and responsibility is frightening.
Then you can close your mind and stop making the effort to work stuff out for yourself.

As in my sig, "Believing is easier than thinking...."

[LordoftheLeftHand]

While this might be politically incorrect, I'm going with "slightly insane".

Ask a skeptic what it would take to convince him that he was wrong, and you will generally get a simple answer.

Ask a believer what it would take to convince them that they are wrong, and they will generally tell you it is not possible that they are wrong.

Believing that you can not possibly be wrong is a sure sign of insanity (at least in my book).

But hey, I could be wrong.

LLH

[Ryokan]

While this might be politically incorrect, I'm going with "slightly insane".

Intercourse political correctnes, they're raving loonies.

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Intercourse political correctnes, they're raving loonies.

I'm thinking; shining examples of cognative dissonance.

[writerdd]

I don't put these beliefs down to stupidity or insanity, but to a willful attitude towards scientific or worldly truth. The fundamentalist prefers a closed, simplistic and false universe of thought, because it feels safer. They see ignorance as blissful.

Under science and a sceptical outlook, most significant questions remain open. There are always more areas of research. We don't know exactly how to reconcile quantum mechanics with gravity. We can't always cure disease. Today's scientific knowledge is in some cases tomorrow's forgotten theory. Or sometimes it endures and remains an accepted truth. Our world (the real world) is more complicated. Furthermore in the moral sphere we accept that there may be no absolute answers.

It's all too much for some people. The complexity and responsibility is frightening. The fundamentalist takes smug refuge in final and correct answers. The Canyon dates from the flood. Anything is possible with God. The KJV says it so its true. The Bible even explains that Yahweh has hardened the unbeliever's heart and that's why we won't see the truth. The end times are coming. There are absolute answers and a future plan for the universe, but luckily finite human beings don't have to work it out, it's in the hands of Jesus Christ.

Then you can close your mind and stop making the effort to work stuff out for yourself.

This message is the closest to the truth of any in this thread. I used to be a fundamentalist Christian, although I was never a YEC. I believed the 6 days in Genesis was a metaphor for a longer time period. But I was still a creationist.

At any rate, mostly I wanted to feel safe and have a worldview that was not frightening. Black and white morality is very immature and yet it is very safe feeling.

I believe that most, if not all YECs, are very frightened and are trying to find a way to live in peace. Their beliefs give them peace, therefore they will not look at any evidence to the contrary because that causes chaos and more fear.

That's leaving out a whole lot of detail, but I think the gyst of my experience is captured. It's very sad, actually. I think we should be looking for ways to help these people, rather than calling them names.

Donna

[andyandy]

It's very sad, actually. I think we should be looking for ways to help these people, rather than calling them names.

Donna

I tend to agree with Donna....most people on this forum are blessed with a good degree of intelligence....and are able therefore to draw evidence from a variety of sources, and objectively form their own opinions....this is probably due to a combination of innate natural ability and a solid academic grounding.....not everyone is so fortunate....it remains a sad fact that a lot of people are happy to belive what they read in newspapers, what they see on TV or what someone tells them - without analysing this information at all....
I would group most YEC believers into this group - belonging to that large section of the population happy to take information at face value - but unlucky enough to have been indoctrinated with creationist nonsense....
with regards to this group being "crazy" for not listening to reasoned argument - i think that's a little harsh....most indoctrination occurs during childhood - and i think plenty of studies show that ideas drilled into children (especially ones with such moral hooks) are pretty resilient to change later in life - partly because to reject these ideas often involves rejecting (and letting down) family and friends of the faith....with both moral and social hooks in place i would imagine that older YEC believers find it easier to shut their mind off to reasoned argument than to deal with the huge implications that accepting these arguments may have on their lives...... i dont think that's crazy - to stick your fingers in your ears to prevent hearing something truly terrible..... that's human nature :)
i think we should feel sorry for them.....and reserve contempt for those responsible for the indoctrination.....

[blutoski]

I've never seen the Himalayas but I have seen the Grand Canyon, which these people also think was carved out from the flood.

I think you're question boils down to: what is the difference between stupidity and insanity? I think if somebody is brought up being taught the YEC stuff as children and they believe it, that is just stupidity. But if they are shown that they are wrong and how they are wrong but refuse to believe the truth that is insanity.

Nah. Mental illness is different: the YECs and many fundamentalists can construct a more or less coherent, internally-consisten narrative, whereas the insane are not even capable of having the discussion. Their sentences usually don't parse at all.

YECs may be misinformed, miseducated, propagandized, isolated, &c. So, just showing them one or two skeptical facts to contest the last thirty years of their reading and lectures should not be expected to result in a sudden rejection of their beliefs. It takes repetition, time, motivation, and the right environment to undo all that.

[writerdd]

YECs may be misinformed, miseducated, propagandized, isolated, &c. So, just showing them one or two skeptical facts to contest the last thirty years of their reading and lectures should not be expected to result in a sudden rejection of their beliefs. It takes repetition, time, motivation, and the right environment to undo all that.

I think the polarization in the US is a very bad thing. Everyone seems to hang out only with likeminded people. So we are very rarely exposed to different ideas, making it easier to stay happy in our little subcultures and not even realize that other people think differently. Of if we do discover a few others who think differently, it's all too easy to demonize them because we don't know them as human beings, only as stereotypes of the "other".

[blutoski]

I think the polarization in the US is a very bad thing. Everyone seems to hang out only with likeminded people. So we are very rarely exposed to different ideas, making it easier to stay happy in our little subcultures and not even realize that other people think differently. Of if we do discover a few others who think differently, it's all too easy to demonize them because we don't know them as human beings, only as stereotypes of the "other".

I'm pretty sure it's not a distinctly US problem, unfortunately. I think the problem has the potential to get worse, since the Internet and the 500-channel mediaverse allow people to literally tune out unwanted opinions.

[Zep]

Don't forget, folks. The YEC people like Answers In Genesis and Creation Research are actually in it for the power, prestige and the money.

If they were honest about their own beliefs they would be prepared to discuss them forthrightly, in public. Instead, as has been explained above, they are playing the adult game of fingers in the ears, la la la can't hear you.

Reality, and other facts known about them, suggests the leading cabal knows full well that they speak drivel to their followers. But the lure of power over the followers, the prestige (such as it is) of being considered scientific somebodies, and the buckets of money they can continue to rake in off the believers tax free, is obviously much more desirable than admitting any falsehoods.

This also says that it is not us that they need to convince of the rightness of their bilge, it is existing and potential followers...preferably with open wallets. They're a cheaper version of Scientology.

[blutoski]

Not that you can't be crazy and a YEC at the same time. This bloke appears to more than a little touched:

http://christiansbiblestudy.org/williemartin/Chronology.htm

There is a symptom of some brain disorders characterized by the tendency to keep writing: hypergraphy. Looks like a candidate.

Mind, then there's the ones who make no sense:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/51316

Apparently, "Paypal" sounds enough like "Papal" to be proof of a world-domination attempt for this guy. Ooookaaaay.

[Ryan O'Dine]

There are “reward” centers in the brain which release endorphins, enkephalins, etc. They existed long before humans. Part of their purpose was and is to reinforce useful behaviors, social and otherwise.

Along came humans. These creatures had something all previous animals lacked: a vivid imagination. So vivid, in fact, it had the power to trigger reward centers without reference to external reality.

Then along came religion. Religious belief honed the capability of the imagination to trigger the reward centers of the brain. Every time believers assure themselves they’re walking the righteous path under the watchful eye of the SuperAlpha Pack Leader, their brain rewards them with a little poke of endorphins.

Extremists, including YECs, are people who are either naturally prone to auto-endorphin addiction, or who drive themselves into addiction (by a process I have yet to pull out of my you-know-what).

Add a lot of hand waving, and I think I’ve got a theory here.

[writerdd]

There are “reward” centers in the brain which release endorphins, enkephalins, etc. They existed long before humans. Part of their purpose was and is to reinforce useful behaviors, social and otherwise.

Along came humans. These creatures had something all previous animals lacked: a vivid imagination. So vivid, in fact, it had the power to trigger reward centers without reference to external reality.

Then along came religion. Religious belief honed the capability of the imagination to trigger the reward centers of the brain. Every time believers assure themselves they’re walking the righteous path under the watchful eye of the SuperAlpha Pack Leader, their brain rewards them with a little poke of endorphins.

Extremists, including YECs, are people who are either naturally prone to auto-endorphin addiction, or who drive themselves into addiction (by a process I have yet to pull out of my you-know-what).

Add a lot of hand waving, and I think I’ve got a theory here.

I can see how that can lead to belief in God in general, but not to specific doctrines like YEC.

[Ryan O'Dine]

I can see how that can lead to belief in God in general, but not to specific doctrines like YEC.
That's where the hand waving comes in. :w2: (Also known as: still working on it.)

Something to do with the pack mentality. Any religious idea can be the tribal "fire" about which a pack gathers. Why some succeed where others fail... something something endorphins...

[ChristineR]

How about the human tendency to attach meaning where there is none? "I feel so great going to church and all those Muslims are so unhappy, I'm sure my God is real and theirs is just pretend."

[Ryan O'Dine]

If I could ammend my reply.

Really the theory is only meant to explain how YEC’s are neither insane nor stupid -- only addicted.

I’m sure everyone’s heard of the experiments where rats were put in a box with electrodes to their pleasure centers. There are two levers in the box: one triggers the electrode, the other delivers food. Invariably, the rats pleasure themselves to the point of starvation.

Maybe that’s a bit of what’s going on here. (Like I said, just a crude theory.)

[ferd burfle]

Am I insane for thinking these people are grasping that tenuously to the ropes of cogent mental functioning?

A year or so ago, I came across a Web forum for people who'd left the Mormon faith. One of the listings in their FAQ defining jargon used on their site was for the term 'toggle switch'. This was used as shorthand to describe an individual who in their working life was demonstrably well above average intelligence but who nonetheless believed in extreme fundamentalist concepts like a young earth. The joking explanation for this was that such individuals had a toggle switch at the base of their skulls. When they came into work at 8 a.m., they turned on their brains and as they left the building in the evening they turned them back off.

I work with a YEC who is a very, very smart mechanical engineer. If you ever watched him take a large body of production data, filter and sort it in a spreadsheet and then pull it into a statistical analysis program, it would pin your ears back. Yet some of his religious beliefs, to me, are tantamount to believing in the Easter Bunny.

So while I'm among the first to dismiss fundies as wackjobs, bozos or nutters, I have to work harder to explain why really smart people like this can believe really dumb things. I don't have a comprehensive take on it yet, but if they are nuts, they're selectively so.

Ferd

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

http://skeptically.org/logicalthreads/id15.html

[Meffy]

Without being able to know the phenom from the inside, as it were, I've got to guess based on the behavior of the people I've known who thought this way, and what they told me, both directly and indirectly.

One hypothetical type of "invisibility" that's been discussed in these forums and elsewhere (ISTR there's a science fiction story with this as a plot element) is psychological -- the invisible person has the ability, whether psychic or otherwise, to make everyone want to be looking somewhere else than at him or her. Nobody looking, nobody sees you. You're in a group's collective blind spot. Bingo.

My supposition is that people who can function normally in everyday life, yet who can switch to the magical thinking that YEC and other such doctrines require, have a zone of aversion to thought similar to the invisible person's zone of aversion to attention. The ones I can think of didn't seem to be aware they were veering away from thinking seriously about these topics, even as they did it over and over during a brief, erm, "discussion."

This is doubtless just one of many ways people manage the trick. The one that I've encountered in my limited exposure to YEC type thinkers.

[steve s]

I've never seen the Himalayas but I have seen the Grand Canyon, which these people also think was carved out from the flood.


Let's see. The Grand Canyon was carved out by the flood. But wait! That can't be right because the strata in the canyon were laid down by the flood. But that can't be right because they had to already be there to be carved out by the flood........:eek: :confused: :boggled:

A perfect example of cognitive dissonance.

Steve S.

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Let's see. The Grand Canyon was carved out by the flood. But wait! That can't be right because the strata in the canyon were laid down by the flood. But that can't be right because they had to already be there to be carved out by the flood........:eek: :confused: :boggled:

A perfect example of cognitive dissonance.

Steve S.

Doh! Would have liked to see Shermer use that in his debate with Hovind.

[Angus McPresley]

I have a little test I use when discussing the age of the universe with YECs.

I just ask them how we could be seeing light from other galaxies that are considerably more than 6000 light years away. If they say that God created the universe with the light from those galaxies already most of the way here...

...then the discussion is over. Because there is NO evidence I can supply that can't be explained away that way. So what's the point of even arguing after that?

[fishbob]

Willful Blissful Ignorance

That is a good working definition of stupidity.

[steve s]

Doh! Would have liked to see Shermer use that in his debate with Hovind.

That's one of my favorite arguments to bring up--not just the Grand Canyon, but mountain ranges also. They believe that the fossils and strata that make up mountain ranges were laid down by the flood. But they also believe that the flood forced up the mountains (How? I (nor they) haven't a clue.) Are we to believe that these sediments turned to stone in less than 40 days?

Steve S.

[Zep]

That's one of my favorite arguments to bring up--not just the Grand Canyon, but mountain ranges also. They believe that the fossils and strata that make up mountain ranges were laid down by the flood. But they also believe that the flood forced up the mountains (How? I (nor they) haven't a clue.) Are we to believe that these sediments turned to stone in less than 40 days?

Steve S.1) Goddidit.

2) Yes.

How can you argue with that? You can't - it's indefensible as well as illogical. You are arguing with a myth, a fairy-tale, a legend. You may as well logically debate the activities and powers of the Tooth Fairy.

[writerdd]

I know it's hard to understand, but these 2 Bible versus are why YECs don't care about all of the stuff that's been thrown out here.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

This gives YECs the same thing that science allows--for things to be unknown and to be discovered in the future. For the most part, they believe that sooner or later science will discover that the Bible is true. In the meantime, they are not too worried about it because they have their faith.

These people live in a different reality than most of the people in the modern world. You can't even begin to understand them, I don't think, unless you immerse yourself in their worldview. I was a born-again Christian for 15 years or so. I have no idea how a nonbeliever could ever truly comprehend how they think, but reading some memoirs might help. "My Fundamentalist Education" by Christine Rosen might be a good one. She explains what she learned in a fundamentalist school about creation and evolution.

[Meffy]

@Zep: Too right. Except that to the casual observer there appears to be physical evidence supporting the existence of the Tooth Fairy.

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

To me, that translates roughly to, "Be good sheeple."

[ChristineR]

I was raised in that tradition. I never really bought into it. It was a "creationist science" comic book that convinced me evolution was correct. Even as a kid I could see that the level of science in that field was too absurd to be taken seriously.

I haven't come up with a way to explain how creationists and literalists think, although I've tried. I'm often amazed at how much prejudice there is against these people in the atheist/skeptical community. These people are not insane, at least not by any common definition, nor are they retarded, nor do they all wear polyester and marry their cousins. Mostly I would say that they just don't look very hard at objective material.

If you feel up to it, you might try reading one of the major creationist or ID books that concentrates on something you don't know much about. For example, I really don't know much about geology, but I do know that there are models for canyons and geologic columns, and flooding, and that lots of people have spent lots of time observing the evidence and comparing it to their models and testing their models and that all these smart people believe in an old earth. But if I could convince myself that these people were all part of an evil conspiracy and I read one of the books about the Grand Canyon, I probably wouldn't be able to refute it.

[writerdd]

I haven't come up with a way to explain how creationists and literalists think, although I've tried. I'm often amazed at how much prejudice there is against these people in the atheist/skeptical community. These people are not insane, at least not by any common definition, nor are they retarded, nor do they all wear polyester and marry their cousins. Mostly I would say that they just don't look very hard at objective material.


Me too. Calling people names and putting them down certainly won't help them to escape their closed mindedness, nor will it help to make atheists (and those who go by other names who are also nonreligious) less despised in America. Those in other countries may not have to worry about this so much.

Most creationists don't look at objective matieral at all, because they don't care about it. They are mostly concerned with their personal lives and the safety of their children. Granted, there are a few vocal ID proponents and creationists who are printing the silly tracts, who are trying to infiltrate the schools and who are using their actions to gain political power. These are not the everyday Christians. In fact, these power-mongers are worried that the every day Christians are not falling for their ********, which is why they print those tracts. They are not meant to convert scientists to creationism, they are meant to make Christians afraid that evolution is equal to atheism.

I think there are two different relationships between the leaders and the laypeople in born-again communities.

1) The leaders are reasonable, but the people in the pews take the teachings to extremes. This is an common scenario in many churches.

and

2) The leaders are extremists who are using religion to manipulate gullible people. This is the way televangelists work, although some are sincere and others are true con-artists.

Both of these scenarios are common. In my experience, the first is more common than the second, but the second gets all of the press. When the laypeople who tend to go to extremes start listening to the extremist leaders, then all hell breaks loose.

Just FYI, most fundamentalists (and evangelicals and Pentecostals) are embarassed by the likes of Jerry Fallwell and James Dobson and don't want to be associated with them.

[scimystic]

I suppose I could post a poll about this, but this issue has been done to death amongst both non-believer and religious skeptics. If you have a comment, I'd rather you put it in the context of a spectrum ranging from insanity through willful delusion to the ironic application of post-modernism that I accuse YECs of where one can "interpret" a mountain chain to be 4,000 years old, not 40,000,000 years.

The reason I raise the whole insanity issue is because of posts I've been reading in the Christian Forums Creationist sub-forum. The gist of which is a self-validating prophecy about outsiders rejecting their message summed up with references to verses that say the Cross is foolishness to non-belivers and that YECs would rather be percieved as fools than reject their literalist interpretation of Genesis.

I don't think YECs guilty of foolishness though. I think they're bordering on insanity. To look at the Himalayas and suggest that they were created 4,000 years ago during Noah's flood depsite all the geological evidence that they are millions of years old and continue to grow millimeters per year to this day because of plate tectonics isn't "foolishness," post-modernism or even willful denial of facts but insanity.

I'm at the point where I don't see much difference between a schizophrenic thinking their television is telling them to hoard newpapers and a Creationist thinking the U.S. Geological Survey is part of a grand atheist/Satanic conspiracy trying to steal the souls of Christian school children.

Am I insane for thinking these people are grasping that tenuously to the ropes of cogent mental functioning?


In general, I'd have to agree with Cleon. The YECs are an extreme case, but the phenomenon of interest would seem to be religious fundamentalism itself. Basically: 'maintaining as knowledge, proposals that can be seen to be absurd in relation to those that must be maintained as knowledge on the basis of physical observation'. I think that 'insanity' might be a little bit strong as a description for this, but only a little bit. The underlying problem seems to be reductible to the old computer aphorism: "garbage in, garbage out". Reason is the attribute that human minds develop last (just starting, according to Pagiet, from around age 7). If, in the meantime, the child's parents and society have downloaded into its mind all sorts of irrational proposals - not as tentative 'merely human' knowledge, but as a special qualitatively superior kind of knowledge ['truth'], which is special exactly in that it is supposed to represent the actual state of reality - then from our point of view the child's mind will be pretty well trashed. Mature and effective reason cannot develop from a foundation of belief that reality itself is irrational. It seems to me to be observable that we have been guilty of this, as a species, for at least the past 7,000 years. I think that I understand how and why. Basically, why it was necessary/inevitable that we should pass through such a developmental stage. But think that it's killing us now. That we have got, at best, perhaps one more generation in which to start outgrowing it if we wish to avoid our first generalized/world-wide species die-back. Anyone interested will find a fuller treatment of these ideas at my blog: http://poppersinversion.blogspot.com

BR to all,

Scimystic

[psy kick]

Not sure if I can be called a young earth creationist. I believe the earth is billions of years old, but God cleared it off and then formed man and woman not all that long ago.
We are not insane, of course. I wonder if enough of that kind of thinking goes around, soon the "insane" who believe differently from others will be locked up somewhere and 're-educated."

[Meadmaker]

I have a cousin who is a YEC. He's a pretty smart guy, and has a bunch more money than me.

I think to explain the phenomenon, you first have to realize that the science of evolution is pretty obscure stuff. If you look into it, it's pretty overwhelming that the Earth is very old, but why bother looking into it? How does it affect your life? It really doesn't.

Furthermore, unless you look really deep, you can't even prove the case with anything other than an argument from authority. I understand the basic principles of rock dating, but if you hand me a rock and ask me how old it is, I wouldn't have a clue how to find out, except to tell you to find a geologist. Because it is of interest to me, I've read a bunch and thought about it, and I'm pretty sure that I haven't been hornswoggled by a bunch a high fallutin college edecated fellers.

On the other hand, if it had not been something of interest to me, I would be looking at two different authority figures. One of them is a nice man who says Jesus loves me, and the other is a weird guy who wants my tax money to play with rocks. Who would you believe?

I look at my cousin as someone who really doesn't give a hoot how old the Earth is, but he likes the people who say it is young better than he likes the people who say it is old. I think there are plenty of people who make their decisions like that.

[Kopji]

Mental illness is a term that describes a broad range of mental and emotional conditions. Mental illness also refers to one portion of the broader ADA term mental impairment, and is different from other covered mental impairments such as mental retardation, organic brain damage, and learning disabilities. The term ‘psychiatric disability’ is used when mental illness significantly interferes with the performance of major life activities, such as learning, thinking, communicating, and sleeping, among others.
Someone can experience a mental illness over many years. The type, intensity and duration of symptoms vary from person to person. They come and go and do not always follow a regular pattern, making it difficult to predict when symptoms and functioning will worsen, even if treatment recommendations are followed. Although the symptoms of mental illness often can be controlled effectively through medication and/or psychotherapy, or may even go into remission, for some people the illness continues to cause periodic episodes that require treatment. Consequently, some people with mental illness will need no support, others may need only occasional support, and still others may require more substantial, ongoing support to maintain their productivity.

The most common forms of mental illness are anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and schizophrenia... Mental illness requires professional help in order to establish a diagnosis and to plan treatment...
http://www.bu.edu/cpr/reasaccom/whatis-psych.html

We risk building strawmen arguments because what we call insanity is complex.

Our brain's 'thinking habits' can work to enrich our experience of the world, manifesting things of beauty or benefit - or work to our harm or destruction. Many times some of both. I suppose that when our habits cause enough harm we label them 'mental illness'.

'Does belief in YEC cause harm?' I'd say no, except YEC'ers share a habit of immunity to 'real experience'. Someone who has experienced the Grand Canyon: hiked it, touched the rocks, watched the river - and believes it was all created about 6000 years ago probably has thinking habits that affect other aspects of their life in negative ways.

IMHO a YEC who "knows" the Grand Canyon without personal experience of it could be a very reasonable, logical, thinking person. But to experience it involves bringing many senses together and requires a dangerous habit of denial to think it was created all at once about 6000 years ago.

The Grand Canyon screams for an ancient earth at every turn: The north rim is much higher than the south rim, the middle of the canyon is deeper than the two ends (as if it drained through a large hill). Different layers have different slopes, the very hardest layers are very steep and straight, the softer layers are less steep. The canyon itself is almost a mile deep and can only be entered by way of eroded fault lines that split the chasm.

I am not qualified to judge if YEC'ers are 'insane' or not. They share some crazy 'thinking habits' though.

I do find myself wishing for a world that could exist without us all wondering if voices in people's heads are really from God or not...

[AWPrime]

I think that YECs need to feel special. Being just a 'person' in the history of the several billion year old universe, just isn't enough.

[writerdd]

'Does belief in YEC cause harm?

Well, irrational though processes cause harm because they lead to bad decisions. This is true on the personal level and gets worse in the public arena. So I think believe in YEC does indeed cause harm, perhaps not in an of itself, but as a symptom of a larger problem where people are afraid to face reality.