Morgantown Atheists » lecture

Why People Defend Their Dogma

Neece — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:43:59 +0000

Something that I have always found frustrating is how religious people (and people who are really into politics) are so dogmatic about their beliefs. As a skeptical atheist, I have come to realize that challenging peoples’ beliefs is usually frustrating, maddening, and completely fruitless. Well, Doctor Professor Luke Galen gave a talk recently called Terror Management: How Our Worldviews Help Us Deny Death. You can listen to the lecture through the Reasonable Doubts podcast (of which he’s a part): RD Extra: Denying Death, and you can see Dr. Galen’s slides here (pdf)

I know not all of you like to listen to podcasts. So I went through it and transcribed a good chunk of what Luke said in his lecture, the parts that I thought were most important. I have a few thoughts afterward. By the way, I missed the beginning for reasons I can’t remember (this took me a couple of days to make it all make sense) but this is a lecture about Dr. Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory.

Partial transcript:

…This is where we get neurotic about death. It’s the ultimate inferiority complex. Our lifespan is limited. We realize we must die but in striving to overcome that, it creates more problems. We put a lot of energy into denying death.

One way to summarize Becker’s theory: It’s good to have a brain that can plan for the future and be self-aware, but the problem is that when we become scared of our own mortality it sets up a defense against that. Part of the defense involves symbols. We think symbolically and so our symbols set up a barrier. These symbols can be religious, political, symbols of our mastery over the world, symbols of making money, etc.

What Becker thought was that culture itself is a buffer against these threats to our self esteem. We set up our belief in culture and human culture really is an attempt to deal with threats to our own mortality and our self esteem. So first, what is self esteem?

Self esteem is not just a product of you, individually. What Becker thought was that self esteem was something you get a sense of only through other people. So you think of yourself as a valued person who has powers, who can act upon the world, but that is socially validated by parents, siblings, peers, a gradually expanding group of people. This gets more abstract and symbolic as the child grows up. So as a young adult you might latch onto ideologies. For many people this is religion. You join a church and get a sense of what you need to do to be good or bad from those groups too. The good thing is that these groups give you clear guidelines to derive your self esteem.

This can be positive or negative. So if you don’t get positive reinforcement, you’ll look for self esteem and validation in other ways. So this is why people join cults and gangs, etc.

Hero Striving System: whatever you use to seek pride and superiority. Everyone does this in different ways. The system is different for different people but it all boils down to wanting to feel worthwhile.

So cultural symbols can provide a buffer against our mortality fear. How can I transcend death? This is Immortality Striving. It all boils down to “the end is not the end.” This could also be more abstract. Your cultural striving could be symbolic striving against death. You believe your genes and your legacy will pass down even after you die through your children. You create something that will last after your death, like a pyramid, or a lot of money, etc. You’re saying, “I was here, I mattered.” This maintains your self esteem.

Here’s where the problem comes in. If you are so invested in these strivings, in these worldviews to drive your self esteem, that means any threat to those worldviews, to that symbolic system, if they are poked at, is not trivial. This will poke at your self esteem. This person is challenging my worldview. And someone doesn’t even have to be mean to threaten you, because there are different worldviews. Every time you encounter a different person, a different culture, you see the standards of normal differ.

What Becker thought was that being presented with a different worldview is inherently threatening. Because if that guy’s right, he has a different worldview, he seems perfectly happy with his system, and it’s contradictory to my system, there’s a problem for my system.

So a lot of war, strife and prejudice was really about more than just “you’re different, I don’t like you, you have funny gods”, but it’s a threat to our self esteem. So if he’s right, I’m not going to heaven, or there isn’t a heaven.

So an atheist’s world view is very different and therefore very threatening.

People, when confronted with different worldviews have to find a way to deal with it. You can denigrate people (call them stupid); try to convert them to your worldview (proselytize or missionary work) – which validates your worldview and your self esteem; assimilate people – neutralizes the threat by getting them to give up part of it (Native Americans, etc); accommodation – declaw the other worldview by incorporating some of their elements into ours (like blue jeans, hippy symbols, etc) in a very sterilized sort of way; or annihilate the other worldview – genocide, stamping out everything about the American Indians, even their buffalo, don’t let them speak their own language, etc.

Here’s where Terror Management Theory comes in, with empirical testing. There are 2 main predictions to test:

1. If we threaten someone with mortality thoughts, if we remind them of death, that should result in compensatory response to bolster their worldview.

Mortality Salience Hypothesis (around the 30 minute mark)

2. If we poke at someone’s worldview and suggest that they may not be correct, we should see an increase in their death anxiety. They might become more fearful of their own mortality if their worldviews are challenged in some way.

From the clip of the video, Life and Death: Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality (video on demand), Flight From Death – The Quest for Immortality (dvd)

The first component of TMT states that individuals need to sustain faith in a meaningful worldview. The second component states that individuals need to feel as though they are value protected members, objects of significance within this worldview. This is self esteem.

Talk of politics and what kinds of leaders people will choose when their mortality feels threatened: (39 minute mark). (there is a polarizing effect)

There is a reciprocal relationship between threats and my own mortality and worldview.

49:00 – more religious studies: Here’s an interesting one. A group of high fundamentalists (believing in biblical literalism) were confronted with contradictions in the bible, they unconsciously thought about their own mortality more.

What does that mean? What’s at stake? It goes a bit deeper than they just want the bible to be perfect and literal, or that they want to preserve a belief in doctrine. When people are defending religious concepts, their worldview is at stake. When someone pokes at their belief and says your belief isn’t true, or here is evidence against your views, it’s more than just a contradiction of these facts, it’s an emotional reaction the person is going to have because that is their ticket to immortality. It raises fears of their own death when those are challenged.

52:30 – creation and evolution worldview studied with similar results. Creationists who had their worldview threatened had higher unconscious death fears.

Implications: why won’t people accept data on evolution? This study would imply that it’s not simple bullheadedness or dogmatism, it cuts deeper than that. From a TMT perspective, these people are defending their worldview. This is what keeps mortality fears in check. If someone comes along and pokes at that worldview it’s not just a matter of intellectual debate anymore, this is an actual threat to their sense of symbolic immortality.

55:00 Dual nature to mortality salience. Studies show that if you show the positive aspects of a religion, for example, then expose them to mortality salience, the people end up defending a worldview that is more accepting. So religion and politics might contain mixed positive and negative messages. If the positive ones are primed and made more active, the person when under threat defends those more too.

So mortality salience isn’t all about doom and gloom and threats. What this would imply is that, it depends on what message is accentuated.

57:20 What about atheists, who don’t have a worldview of literal immortality? Does that mean that we’re immune from the effects of death threats because we’re not expecting to live for the resurrection, or be reincarnated? That is, we are probably not using that as a security blanket. Essentially Becker says it doesn’t matter – “It doesn’t matter whether their cultural hero system is frankly magical, religious and primitive, or secular, scientific and civilized. It’s still a mythical hero system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of unshakable meaning. Civilized society is a hopeful belief and a protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense, everything that man does is religious.” So there are just as many non-theistic, nonreligious worldviews that can be defended as religious worldviews. For example, the cult of Stalinism and Mao. Or other things people value like human rights, humanism, science: these things are also worldviews that are defended because they give our life meaning.

Somebody might not say, “I’m going to go to heaven, that’s the only thing that would matter to me”, but they might say that they support these values. That’s their ticket to immortality. So this has the same effect. If anyone pokes at the Bill of Rights, messes with Jefferson, or says that science doesn’t matter, to many people who have a naturalistic worldview that would be just as threatening as people who have religious worldviews. So these theories don’t just apply to people who have supernatural or religious worldviews.

1:00:00 What should people do with this information? The denial of death in our culture is particularly strong. So one way to deal with that is to learn to have a worldview that acknowledges mortality on a regular basis. Live more consciously with those reminders everyday, not in a negative or morbid sense, but in a sense that this is part of life. “This is going to happen to me, and I’m going to make life count now, instead of saying I can transcend and cheat death.”

Also, choose ideologies that don’t rely upon the strident defense of “that guy is threatening my worldview, I’m going to wipe him out”. Ideologies don’t have to be threatening to other people. Make the unconscious conscious. Recognize that this is a bulwark to my worldviews, to recognize when you see a commercial, a political package, or a doctrine that this is really more than what it says. It’s actually a worldview defense. If we make that conscious, we can recognize what it is that we’re doing when we do it. So then we can take a step back and say, “I’m going too far. I’m defending myself against my own sense of insignificance by doing this action.”

1:02:13 There are ways you can strive for immortality in a nondestructive way. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to strive against other peoples’ worldviews. Find positive ways to find meaning for your lives through positive ways to defend your worldview; charity, supporting other people, etc.

If you’ve made it through the transcript and are still with me, congratulations. This isn’t the most fun topic, and this post is really long. But it does have huge implications and can really help us in understanding our own motivations as well as how other people are dealing with their own fears and thoughts.

I have a followup, also by Dr. Luke Galen and the rest of the Reasonable Doubts crew, that will give us some very practical advice in dealing with people and their dogmatic beliefs. But this post was plenty long enough, so I thought I’d save it for later.

I welcome your thoughts.

Crossposted from Heaving Dead Cats by Neece

The Mathematics Behind the Music

Neece — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:05:20 +0000

The Beatles wanted take us on a magical mystery tour. On Feb. 8 the WVU Department of Mathematics would like the public to join in a musical mystery tour of its own.

The opening chord to “A Hard Day’s Night” is famous because, for 40 years, no one knew exactly what chord George Harrison was playing. It took mathematician Jason Brown, professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Dalhousie University, to figure out the exact notes and instrumentation using a formula called Fourier transform.

Brown is currently using math to determine which Beatle really wrote “In My Life.” Both Paul McCartney and John Lennon claimed authorship, and Brown aims to use mathematics to prove which musician actually composed the song.

Brown will take a break from this research to present “The Mathematics behind the Music” on Monday, Feb. 8 in Ming Hsieh Hall, room G21.

“Brown’s work really shows that mathematics and music are truly universal languages,” said Eddie Fuller, chair of the WVU mathematics department.

“He makes math accessible and fun for people of all ages and walks of life,” Fuller added.

Brown’s work on more than 60 research articles and his book, “Our Days Are Numbered,” has garnered him media attention on both a national and international stage in such well-known media outlets as CBC, BBC, Guitar Player Magazine, NPR radio and the websites of Wired and the Wall Street Journal.

In his lecture, he will be discussing different types of mathematical techniques that are relevant to musicians. This includes derivation of the blues and graph colorings, the musical art of being ambiguous (or not), and musical and mathematical transformations among others.

“The ancient Greeks elevated both [mathematics and music] to the same level,” said Brown. “And even the most unschooled rock musician uses more mathematics than he or she realizes.”

For more information, contact Eddie Fuller, chair of the mathematics department, at 304-293-2011×2322 or via e-mail at ef@math.wvu.edu.

From WVU Today

Dawkins Teaches A Primer On Evolution In 5 Great Videos

Neece — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:03:14 +0000

Growing Up In The Universe is a series of lectures by Dr. Richard Dawkins, Oxford professor. He presents five lectures on life, the universe, and our place in it. With brilliance and clarity, Dawkins unravels an educational gem that will mesmerize young and old alike. Illuminating demonstrations, wildlife, virtual reality, and special guests (including Douglas Adams) all combine to make this collection a timeless classic.

This is from 1991 but besides the antiquated computer technology, it’s interesting and enlightening for young and old alike. You can buy all 5 hour long episodes on DVD from Dawkin’s store.

Episode 1: Waking Up In The Universe

Episode 2: Designed and Designoid Objects

Episode 3: Climbing Mount Improbable

Episode 4: The Ultraviolet Garden

Episode 5: The Genesis of Purpose

The Demography of Unbelief

Neece — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:00:22 +0000

“Who Are These Doubters, Anyway? The Demography of Unbelief”

presented by Tom Flynn, Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism and Editor of Free Inquiry magazine

Thursday, October 29, 7:00 p.m.
Carnegie Science Center
1 Allegheny Avenue, Pittsburgh

You’ve seen the various religion polls and the reported percentages of unbelievers – and the polls vary widely. How do you know which polls are more reliable? Join Tom Flynn as he explores how sociologists and pollsters measure religious belief and unbelief. He will also cover the controversies and scandals in the polling field, and what the polling data on religion really mean (for example, how many of those “no religious preference” people are really atheists?).

Tom Flynn is Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism and the Editor of Free Inquiry magazine. A journalist, novelist, entertainer, and folklorist, Flynn is the author of numerous articles for Free Inquiry, many addressing church-state issues, as well as the best-selling The Trouble With Christmas, about which he has made hundreds of radio and TV appearances in his role as the curmudgeonly “anti-Claus.” He is also the author of the critically acclaimed anti-religious black comedy science fiction novels, Galactic Rapture and Nothing Sacred. His latest work, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, is a comprehensive reference work on the history, beliefs, and thinking of America’s fastest growing minority: those who live without religion.

General Admission: $6
Friends of the Center: FREE

For more information about this and other CFI Pittsburgh events, please visit www.centerforinquiry.net/pgh or email pgh@centerforinquiry.net.

Darwin’s Ventriloquists by Jonathan Marks, Ph.D.

Neece — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:06:30 +0000

Monday, October 12, 2009 at 7:30 pm in the Mountainlair Blue Ballroom.

You are invited to the 2009 Eberly College Distinguished Lecture, sponsored by the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, in association with the Division of Sociology and Anthropology, on Monday, October 12, 2009. Dr. Jonathan Marks, professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, will be delivering a presentation entitled Darwin’s Ventriloquists, at 7:30 p.m. in the Mountainlair Blue Ballroom. There will be a reception held afterwards in the Gold Ballroom.

This event is intended as a counterpoint to last spring’s lecture by J. Philippe Rushton.

Human evolution expert Jonathan Marks, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, believes today’s training of modern scientists commonly shields them from the history and politics of their work, forcing generations of evolutionary geneticists to rediscover the intimate connection between science and culture.

“What we learn from the social study of evolutionary theory is that the natural and the cultural invariably co-produce the scientific,” said Marks. “Scientific claims, however, are made with a voice of cultural authority about human diversity that are especially sensitive to cultural influences.”

He argues the biggest challenge to contemporary evolutionary theory comes not from creationists, but from biologists themselves, and thinks that evolutionary biology cannot afford to tolerate scientific racism, which is the act of justifying social inequalities between presumptively natural groups of people by recourse to science.

He is author of “Human Biodiversity” (Aldine/Transaction, 1995), and “What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee” (University of California Press, 2002), which received the W.W. Howells Prize in Biological Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association and the J.I. Staley Prize from the School of Advanced Research. His new book, “Why I Am Not a Scientist,” was recently published by the University of California Press.

More information available in the press release.

Time Travel Lecture – WVU – Sept 23

Neece — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:18:42 +0000

Ronald Mallett, professor of physics, University of Connecticut, is giving a lecture on Time Travel.

September 23, 2009 7:30 pm-10:30 pm

260 Hodges Hall, WVU Campus.

That should be fun!

Lecture: Matters of Gravity: Einstein’s Theories of Relativity

Neece — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:47:27 +0000

Wednesday, August 26 2009, 7:30pm

Matters of Gravity: Einstein’s Theories of Relativity (August 26, 2009 @ 7:30 PM – 10:30 PM)

http://calendar.wvu.edu/index.php?eventid=56296&month=Jun2009

This event will be held at/in: 260 Hodges Hall. Lecture will be given by Duncan Lorimer, assistant professor of physics, WVU.
Location : 260 Hodges Hall, WVU Campus

Morgantown Atheists » lecture

Why People Defend Their Dogma

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