Let's not give up hope just yet
The battle by scientists against "irrational" beliefs such as creationism is ultimately futile, a leading experimental psychologist said today.Isn't it slightly ironic that he relies on experiments to tell him this? If the irrationality is so "hardwired," how is it that Professor Hood adheres to the scientific method, and why does he suppose that he and his peers can rise above the "hardwiring" to have a scientific discourse while it's "pointless" to expect that ordinary people ever can?
The work of Bruce Hood, a professor at Bristol University, suggests that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force.
"I think it is pointless to think that we can get people to abandon their belief systems because they are operating at such a fundamental level," said Prof Hood. "No amount of rational evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon those ideas . . . .
. . . . In his lectures, Prof Hood produces a rather boring-looking blue cardigan with large brown buttons and invites people in the audience to put it on, for a £10 reward. As you may expect, there is invariably a sea of raised hands. He then reveals that the notorious murderer Fred West wore the cardigan. Nearly everyone puts their hand down.
Unfortunately, it is just a stunt: the cardigan is not West's. But it illustrates the way even the most rational of people are can be irrationally made to feel uncomfortable." - The Guardian, September 4, 2006
People obviously learn and can be trained to disregard or minimize their reliance on irrational patterns of thought. We do mostly disregard them in a variety of areas of life where there are concrete advantages to doing so.
Most religions seem a lot more complicated than they would have to be if we didn't often reason past our "hardwiring" for superstition and irrationality. Major religions build a lot of quasi-rational superstructure—in the form of narratives, theology, etc.—around their core irrational beliefs. While Bertrand Russell was probably correct that "the average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself," people are still actively taught all sorts of wrong information that impedes their ability to think rationally about the world. And they are often not taught or exposed to, at any meaningful level of detail, ideas that would help them understand the world as it actually is. Evolution is just the most obvious of those ideas. If evolution were taught properly, I would never have had to tell an intelligent adult that, yes, there really were dinosaurs, and my friend would not have had to parry the instant-classic question "if humans evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?"
The demonstration with the cardigan is idiotic. We live in society with other people. There is nothing irrational about not wanting a lecture hall full of people to perceive you as a person who wants to wear Ted Bundy's sweater, let alone as a mercenary eager to don it for money.
posted at 4:39 PM
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