[ExI] Why is there Anti-Intellectualism?

Ben Zaiboc bbenzai at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 26 14:03:32 UTC 2009


<jameschoate at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> 
> ---- John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>
> wrote: 
>  
> > 1)Thinking is harder than accepting and nature often
> follows the path of least action.
> 
> Malarky. Two people can see the exact same information and
> come to distinctly different conclusions. In fact their
> conclusions may be diametric.

This follows naturally from my earlier contention that everyone creates their own internal worlds, and tries to make the best sense they can of their sensory inputs, combined with their memories of past events.

This doesn't mean that John's comment is malarkey, though. Critical thinking *is* harder than just accepting (I have personal evidence of this with my ongoing struggle with Maths), and it's obvious that nature often follows the path of least action (no, not quite obvious. It's more like an actual law of physics).


> 
> Everyone thinks. To believe that a religious person is
> somehow stupid or lazy is itself anti-intellectual. 

Not if you've arrived at that conclusion through thinking about it critically, rather than it just being a gut-reaction.  Everyone does indeed think, but that thinking takes place on a spectrum from critical reasoning to unexamined emotional responses. Guess which end most people do most of their thinking at?


> The
> question is what is the qualitative difference? I would
> contend that from an intellectual perspective a theist and
> an atheist are both anti-intellectual. They're both dogmatic
> and absolutist in their perspectives. They both deny any
> potential for being wrong fundamentally.

Hardly.  Atheism is evidence-based, religion is faith-based.

I can't stress enough that atheism is *not a Belief*.  If you wish to posit a Belief system that states as a matter of faith that god/s do not exist, please do so, but *don't* call it atheism.  Atheism is a *lack* of Belief, and is anything but dogmatic and absolutist.  In fact, it's atheists' hate of dogmatism and absolutism that leads so many of them to become 'militant' (which is a completely incorrect term, btw. Atheists don't blow things up or kill people in the name of atheism), and 'strident' anti-religionists. (I'm capitalising "Belief" to disinguish it from the everyday usage of the word, such as "I believe it's time for lunch", which is a stomach-based, rather than a faith-based position).


> 
> > 2)Logic does not always give the answer that people
> want to hear.
> 
> Logic doesn't always give the write answer. See
> paraconsistent logic as well as Godel. A reliance on logic
> for giving the right answer is no different than relying on
> some other book for the right answer.

Not quite.  At least logic is self-consistent.

 
> > 3)Many believe that being certain is more important
> than being correct.
> 
> This implies some absolutism to reality. I take it you are
> a Platonist then?

John may or may not be a Platonist, he can speak for himself on that.
I don't see any connection between your remark and his, though.  One is a statement about human psychology, the other is about philosophy.

Ben Zaiboc


      



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