Dialogue

I have been mulling over a problem the last few days, and I am curious what other people think. His new book is out and I am wondering, would you pursue a dialogue with a person like Ray Comfort? I would compare him to the mental equivalent of people like Sylvia Brown, or especially David Irving. These people are not necessarily evil, they can be quite 'smart', but they are intellectually harmful, destructive, and tend to lie or ignore evidence. . That would be my main problem with Ray, he acts like he works within the rules of reason and logic, but ignores them habitually. If he was working within a more postmodern thought pattern, I probably would not care. If you're gonna play the logic/reason game, you should play by the rules. I hope if meeting them I would be polite, but have the courage to tell them they are full of bullshit. David Irving is especially insidious. The modus operandi of the holocaust denial movement, as in creationism, you ignore anything that would expose your world view as fantasy. The comic above is a nice illustration of this type of thinking.
Back to my question. Is there a point to having a dialogue with people like that? This is most likely a very hypothetical question, as I will never meet the fellow, but what then do you do with people who subscribe to that sort of world view? Do you gently point them in the direction of more credible apologists. I might have gone that route, pointing out the works of Ken Miller or Francis Collins when addressing the science, and maybe people like Alvin Plantinga when addressing the logic and philosophy. They are all Christians, thought provoking, and unlike when quoting Comfort, don't make it seem like you have sub average cognitive functioning. For a person into Sylvia Brown, I would probably recommend Michael Shermer or Carl Sagan.
I am starting to wonder if the best move is to just ask a person like that questions, and then minimize contact whenever possible. Though this does not sit well with me, as I like reading and being exposed to opposing views. A habit I have developed is to google the names of authors I like, along with the word 'criticism'. This does not always lead to valid criticism, but it can lead to some funny rants. Being exposed to views that contradict my confirmation bias helped me get to where I am now, so I think it can also be helpful for others. Again though, after initial exposure to a person who espouses ideas and views similar to Comfort/Brown/Irving, is it best to eject from the dialogue before your brain squeezes out of your ears and tries to strangle you?
I have met very thoughtful, and thought provoking people of faith. I do like those sort of intense God talks, but when I meet a Ray Comfort type fundamentalist, I find it hard not to get angry. It does not do me any good, it's not constructive and I can't have a good discussion with the person, because I am too annoyed. It's like having a nice warm shower, with someone dumping a bucket of cold water on you. Actually not cold water, but a bucket of runny, cold, cow shit. You need another shower to just to wash the stink off.
What would you do? Do you talk to the Comforts of the world, try to stay calm, polite and respectful, or do you just excuse yourself and try not to get the mental equivalent of cow shit on you before you leave?
Cheers,
Scott

Postmodernism and Theology

Something happened over 300 years ago in Western culture. It had a huge impact on how we view the world, it's called the The Enlightenment, which was preceded by the age of reason. I think this had a huge impact on how people practice Christianity.
I'm a big fan of the scientific method, it obviously works, and is probably the best tool we have for discovering realities in the natural world. Many in the religious community reject much this tool points out, and yet embrace the practice when thinking about their relationship with God. The Bible is approached as something that can be studied, taken apart, and truth can be extracted in much the same way a Chemist would create medicine. When you reduce it to an interpretation, you miss the point. I think Christianity is starting to recover from the adoption of enlightenment thinking and is maybe moving towards the more mystical side of things.
I listened to a speaker this last week who got me thinking along these lines, his name was Peter Rollins. He gave me great hope for a direction of belief, which is that belief does not necessarily matter. What you believe might not be nearly as important as I was led to think. I'm still processing what that means, but I think it is leading me in a good direction. A painting would be a good analogy of this for me. Science can tell us how it was painted, when it was painted, what kind of paint was used, but the meaning of the painting is in the eye of the beholder. It might not matter what I think the painting means, but it's more important that I keep wrestling with that meaning. I liked a story Peter gave which two rabbis are arguing over a verse in the Torah, an argument that has gone on for over twenty years. In the parable God gets so annoyed by the endless discussion that he comes down and he tells them that he will reveal what it really means. However, right at this moment they respond by saying, "What right do you have to tell us what it means? You gave us the words, now leave us in peace to wrestle with them."
That story, and more of what was talked about are in this interview.
Well, that's what I've been thinking about this last week. I might decide it's all bunk, but maybe not.
Cheers.

Hits, Misses, and Ideology

I listened to two podcast lately, and each one got me pondering about how we think.
The first podcast was an interview of Christopher Burns, who is a thinker on modern information management. Here is the link to his interview.
The second podcast is the first in a series called, 'The Climate Wars.' It was done by the CBC radio show 'Ideas'. Here is the link to the paper on the study that was mentioned by Donald Braman.
Us humans tend to remember views and ideas that agree with our own, and our brain actively ignores evidence that would force us to change our ideas and views. Basically, it's very very hard to be skeptical, especially of our own beliefs. We don't like it, and it's like working out at the gym. The more you do it, the stronger the skeptic muscle gets. This was what struck me in Christopher Burns podcast.
It amazed me that the Ideas program had such a strong example of that. In America, climate change became an ideological war, and the same happened, in a lesser extent, in countries with strong American media presence. It seems that the conservative right in America saw the solutions to climate change as a subtle attack on their 'values'. If the solutions to climate change were switched from regulations on pollution, and things of that nature, but to nuclear plants and ideas of that nature, their views on climate change switched. The science had no effect on their views. The science never changed, but the solutions effected if people would accept the science or not. In the first example, people would deny climate change. In the second, with solutions they found ideologically acceptable, all of a sudden climate change was real, happening and we needed to do something about it! I found that truly astonishing.
To learn from this, if you have a very strong opinion on something, be wary of ignoring evidence just because it disagrees with your ideology. There is a strong chance your brain is working against you to keep you in the dark. Examples of people remembering hits and ignoring misses would be holocaust deniers and young earth creationists, which, unsurprisingly, approach their subject matter in almost identical ways. A good further look at this would be Michael Shermers, 'Why people believe weird things'
That's all for today.
Cheers.