Why arguing with believers is useless

[Richard J. Collins]

One of my long standing intellectual pursuits has been to try and understand the roots of bigotry. Why is it impossible to reason people out of their unreasonable ideas? You can say, that people are just stubborn and resistant to change. But, then you have to give an explanation for stubbornness and resistance to change. Obviously, the answer lies deeper in our psyches.

We do know that the brain organizes information in an associative manner. Concepts are linked in an unimaginable tangle of relationships. A house cat, for instance is linked to the category animals, animals that can be dangerous, kittens that are cute, fur all over the couch .... it just goes on and on. Changing any one concept or nugget of information, means possibly rearranging the network connections and revising the contents of our "filing system".

I started calling my concept the "hall closet problem". Going into the hall closet to dig out, say that old pair of sneakers to give to the Salvation Army truck, means digging through everything, extracting the sneakers, and then rearranging the closet contents. But the thought strikes that maybe there are other items we can dispose of this way. What happens is, we open the closet door and are confronted with items spilling out at our feet. We take one look at the jumble of items we face, and decide to just forget the whole thing. It will take too much time and effort. We have more important things to do.

This explanation has served me pretty well, but today I followed a link that a member of the Amazon.com forum posted to an article by Psychologist Gregory Lestor published in the November/December 2000 magazine Skeptical Inquirer. Lestor's explanation for Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die makes perfect sense and will become my new best explanation for bigotry.

I will say this. If you buy Lestor's theory, you must treat religious bigots very differently in the future. Here is the lead paragraph of the article:

Gregory W. Lester

Because a basic tenet of both skeptical thinking and scientific inquiry is that beliefs can be wrong, it is often confusing and irritating to scientists and skeptics that so many people's beliefs do not change in the face of disconfirming evidence. How, we wonder, are people able to hold beliefs that contradict the data?

This puzzlement can produce an unfortunate tendency on the part of skeptical thinkers to demean and belittle people whose beliefs don't change in response to evidence. They can be seen as inferior, stupid, or crazy. This attitude is born of skeptics' failure to understand the biological purpose of beliefs and the neurological necessity for them to be resilient and stubbornly resistant to change. The truth is that for all their rigorous thinking, many skeptics do not have a clear or rational understanding of what beliefs are and why even faulty ones don't die easily. Understanding the biological purpose of beliefs can help skeptics to be far more effective in challenging irrational beliefs and communicating scientific conclusions.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/beliefs.html why people believe

[Michel BOURGOIS]

I have a childhood friend who became a Jehovah Witness. I tried to convince him that Noah's Arch is not only a myth but also a physical impossibility, that the planet has millions of species, that the arch would have to be enormous to welcome them, that it is genetically impossible to reconstruct a species from only one male and one female.... No way ! He sticks to his belief, without even trying to counter my arguments in any way however. Also, it is strictly forbidden to doubt about what he is taught by the hierarchy of his sect, considered by its followers "the unique canal of God". Any attempt to follow another path is considered being inspired by the devil. See, with such a system of thought, the followers are kept in line with the doctrine without any possible protestation.

On the other hand, people hate to realize that they were fooled by their church. To avoid that, they prefer hold on to their creeds, as it is easier to do so.

[Beast]

My take on the issue: Its a vestige left behind as childhood fantasies.

http://atheisthaven.blogspot.com/2007/10/saying-goodbye-to-your-imaginary-friend.html