Why People Believe What They Do

Scientific American ^ | April 10, 2009 | Miller, Lombrozo

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Steve: You're doing really interesting work. You've decoupled sort of, "Is evolution true?", you know, "What are problems with evolution?", from people's interpretations of whether or not they accept evolution. Regardless of evolution itself, we're just talking about the psychological profiles of how you come to either accept or not accept evolution. Some of that work is yours and some of it you're very well familiar with from other people; so let's talk about some of the basics and some of the surprises about the people who accept and don't accept evolution and their reasons for it.

Lombrozo: Sure. So I think one of the most surprising findings has to do with the relationship between understanding the basics of evolutionary theory and accepting it as our best account of the origins of human life. So most people, I think, [or] in particular scientists, tend to think that if people reject evolution and in particular evolution by natural selection, it's because they don't understand it very well; they don't really understand what the theory is telling us. But in fact, if you look at the data from psychology and education, what you find is either no correlation between accepting evolution and understanding it or very, very small correlation between those two factors, and I think that's surprising to a lot of people and in particular to educators and scientists.

Steve: Yeah, it was surprising to me when your data were presented. So what [does] that mean for, you know, education in the country? What should people be thinking about if they have a desire to have evolutionary theory be more accepted by more people?

[Alamo-Girl]

But neither is DNA "altogether physically manifest." There is a sense in which DNA is not physical at all, its sense as an idea — and a pretty darn useful one, as it turns out. The point is, the term DNA refers both to "code" and the physical carrier of the code (i.e., the DNA molecule). Yet typically we do not draw this distinction. Anyhoot, you can "fractionate," or "reduce" a molecule all day long; but you cannot "fractionate" an idea.

Indeed!

Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ, and thank you for your encouragements!

[tacticalogic]

There are many things wrong with this picture. [LOLOL!!!] …

Assertions that "you're doing it wrong" seem to be as common as dirt.

Exactly what the "right way" to do it is seems to elude explicit articulation.

lol

[Jay Thomas]

bfl