Showing posts with label reality day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reality day. Show all posts

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Cognitive Dissonance and You

Feeling as Gleeful as I want to be? Think that we're looking at a whole new era? 

Think again.

The sad thing is, rather than realize their errors, owning up to them and moving forward, many of Camping's followers will, due to the dissonance they will experience (cognitively), actually strengthen their resolve and adherence to their ideology.

Especially those who made public proclamations, as it has been shown that a public statement of belief lessens the willingness to retract said belief/heightens the threshold for evidenciary based retraction. 

So, as much as we may be laughing and in our heart of hearts hoping that this will finally be the catalyst to a more rational future....it's not going to happen :(

Irrationality Takes a Hit AND Three Big (at least to me) Scientific Discoveries Reported On Reality Day

Irrationality Takes a Hit AND Three Big (at least to me) Scientific Discoveries Reported On Reality Day

May 22nd, 2011 is a special date. Anyone reading this likely knows why, so I'll spare you the elongated diatribe and say yay for Reality Day and down with paranoid ignorance, irrationality, fear mongering and pseudoscience. See, not only were the christians wrong (again) (and yes, it was specific sects, not all of them, I know) about the rapture, end of the world, yadayada, but on this awesome day known as Reality Day (as in, you're still here, welcome to reality, pal) science offers three MORE blows to specific assertions put forth by specific subsets of the religious community. Specifically, I am referring to assertions regarding mammalian brain size, contrarian positions regarding the expansion of the universe and dark energy, and lastly, contrarian positions regarding the idea of complexity arising out of simplicity without the guidance of some sentient intelligence.

So, what were these three reported findings?