Why Do We So Devotedly Insist On Believing In Nonsense?

This is a complete cut and paste of a JREF article entitled – Why Do We So Devotedly Insist On Believing In Nonsense? – keep reading, I highly recommend it.

Written by James Randi

Thursday, 10 February 2011 15:55

A survey conducted this month by the Russian Center of Public Opinion Research of 1,600 Russians in different regions of that country has revealed that 32% of them believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth, four percent more than in 2007 when a similar survey was conducted. This fact was trumpeted just as President Medvedev called for national Lunar and deep space programs to be implemented, rather highlighting scientific misconceptions among Russians. That same survey also found 55% of Russians believe that radioactivity is a human invention, and 29% believe that humans lived in the era of dinosaurs. What a strange mixture between scientific ambitions and pure superstition! Right?

Well, I suggest that we in the USA should not begin chortling about this news, which we can easily look upon just another example of ignorance abroad. Our religious community right here at home can outdo anything found elsewhere, and we instill superstitious beliefs in our children in so many ways besides direct religious instruction. In fact, the line of demarcation between Biblical/Koran-sourced influences and other origins, is very, very, fuzzy – though we often do not recognize this fact. For example, every week parents across our nation send their kids off to the local Tae Kwon Do center for a few hours of kicking, aerobics, and self-esteem building, right? But I have to ask, just how much of this – if any at all – is just harmless educational fun and exercise, and how much is simply mindless superstition? We tend to regard jiujutsu, kung fu, aikido, tai chi, and a whole string of other “martial arts,” as acceptable pursuits for kids, not aware that they all profess and teach a metaphysical foundation, a genuinely woo-woo basis that has no supporting evidence other than anecdotal, legendary, tales told in hushed tones to very receptive young ears. Ridiculous stories – but only stories – of “death touches,” impenetrable skin, pyrokinesis, levitation, mind control, literal invisibility, superhuman strength and other supernatural powers provide the fictitious commercial background upon which these business ventures are founded and conducted.

I’ve just received a copy of Dr. Wayne R. Bartz’s new book, Critical Thinking: The Antidote for Faith. In the introduction to the book, speaking of the presumed superiority of our species over others, he writes:

“We alone speak, write, build, create art, compose music, develop technology and construct world-shattering weapons. Clearly no other species does these
things. So we must be the most intelligent species, right? But hold on a second…”

The late British anthropologist Ashley Montague suggests precisely the opposite: because of our exceptional ability to learn, Homo sapiens has arguably become the *least * intelligent species on earth. This is because no other species can be taught the nonsense, the foolishness, the idiotic rubbish that human beings so eagerly embrace. You cannot teach dogs, cats, dolphins or flatworms to hate each other on the basis of color, shape, size, or religion. You cannot get them to organize into armed groups and march off to obliterate those they have been taught to despise. You cannot convince them to build temples to their ancestors, worship gods, attend church, or condemn their own sexual urges. In fact, if we humans observed another species doing these things we would be appalled, concluding that they are defective at best, and at worst, evil…

Dr. Bartz – and Dr. Montague – may be rather over-demoting our species here – I suspect they are – but this is a very sobering observation. As will be made very evident in my next book, A Magician in the Laboratory, I lay much of the blame for the world’s scientific ignorance on the media, and the rest to a lack of proper education. And so long as we have religious organizations sponsoring places of both higher and lower learning, we will have the specters of deities, gurus, angels/demons, flying horses, talking serpents, ghosts, various versions of Paradise/Hades/Valhalla/Nirvana, and other fantasies vying for attention and acceptance with reason and evidence– in short – Science.