BNFree / Bloomington-Normal Freethinkers

Science enthusiasts and critical thinkers cannot escape the reality that human culture world-wide is absolutely chockablock with fake science. The word “scientific” has a cachet that I’ve seen co-opted for homeopathy, energy-harmonized aluminum plates, even Biblical “scientific discoveries” (always good for a laugh.) Science seems to be all about the results, the inventions, the breakthroughs. It’s never about the process, the codified critical thinking that keeps those end products from being complete hokum. We humans have a tendency to see what we want to see, to see what agrees with our preconceptions, to see what benefits us and justifies our beliefs. The scientific method is what developed in order to boil out the biases, the fallacies, the unconscious assumptions which corrupt our cognition.

Pseudoscience has been a bugbear of mine for quite some time. So, let’s talk about UFOs, and why the pseudoscience of UFOlogy fails on so many counts.

FALSIFIABILITY: UFOlogy prominently displays a hallmark of many pseudosciences—it begins with its conclusion, and then goes looking for whatever disparate facts might support it. One of the most common misconceptions about science is that you start with a hypothesis—a question that you’re testing, which you then gather data or do experiments to support. However, one requirement of a good hypothesis is that it is willing and able to be proved wrong. If it is not, you are setting yourself upon a primrose path of Confirmation Bias. continue reading…

Soon on my reading list after Mistakes Were Made is likely going to be The God Virus, by Dr. Darrell Ray. In it, he discusses how many religions can be thought of as parasitic memes–literally viruses of the mind, which take advantage of cognitive dissonance in order to thrive and propagate.

Consider the Seven Deadly Sins: Greed, Pride, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony and Sloth. They fall into two categories: First, we have five flavors of thoughtcrime over which we have no conscious control. The last three are activities which not only are pleasurable but in some degree necessary to live. You have to eat when you’re hungry. You have to rest when you’re tired. You have to have offspring or you go extinct. Because you cannot help but sin, the cognitive dissonance between your concept of morality and your inevitable failure creates guilt, in what Ray calls “the Guilt Cycle.” The only way to relieve the guilt is to return mentally to the thoughts and devotions described by the religion, thus priming you for the next failure which simply being human will inflict. Fundamentally, Ray says, religion is not designed to make you behave well, but rather is about fomenting guilt when you don’t measure up. It’s a great racket, and you’ll notice how picayune and petty are the strictures in many religions, the better to inflict such.

I’m not going to delve into that much more than to say I’m sure it will be interesting reading, but in light of what I’ve already discussed in parts 1 and 2, it does raise concerns about just what I am doing with activism in the Skeptical and Atheist communities. If dissonance from self-concepts of general good sense meant I couldn’t fully succeed with my own family, about something as simple as a screwball diet plan, exactly what am I going to accomplish by telling people their beliefs about their immortal soul and hope for salvation are not justified? continue reading…

The issues surrounding the Skeptic and Freethought movements are an absolute carnival of cognitive dissonance and self-justification. It’s difficult to winnow down, but I’ll take one example. Remember, we all carry the notion that we are intelligent and sensible, and disconfirmation of that notion is a prime source of cognitive dissonance.

Some family members of mine were sold a radical, frightfully expensive diet plan by their chiropractor, which involved a 500 calories-per-day food restriction, vitamin supplements and homeopathic hormone drops. It’s safe to say no element of the program failed to set off its own skeptical alarm bells, and the research I did quickly indicated that this diet was based on bad science.

I had to proceed carefully, though. I knew I couldn’t stand by, because starvation diets and rapid weight loss are not without risk. But I was looking up a very steep incline–not only was I denouncing visible results of 1-2 pounds per day of weight loss, but the outlay of money and professing of belief in its success are extremely potent generators of cognitive dissonance. Every possible incentive for self-justification was in place. continue reading…

I recently downloaded a new iPhone app called Skeptical Science.  The app (and its website) is designed to give easy access to science-based arguments regarding global warming.  Overall, the usability is great and information within appears to be top-notch, but I think this concept needs to be taken further.

First of all, the app’s (and website’s) tagline reads, “Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.”  I feel that this is misleading.  I’m not the first in the skeptical community to say that we all need to stick together and own the term Skeptic/skepticism/skeptical.  Those opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming are often being called “global warming skeptics”.  Although it may seem intuitive to many, this is not a productive description as these people could be mistaken as being part of the skeptical movement, or the skeptical movement could be confused as opposing science-based knowledge.  A better term is “global warming deniers”, and I think this app would be a great place to get the ball moving on the conversion of the term. continue reading…