[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

ping

[metmom]

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.

Only an evo would be surprised at that, because they are so convinced that it's a matter of *proper* education.

[metmom]

Ping.

[metmom]

ping

[MrB]

Here is why people believe what they do:

Heb 8:10
“I will put My laws into their minds,

and I will write them on their hearts,

and I will be their God,

and they will be My people.”

[Manic_Episode]

People believe what they want to believe then start justifying it from there.

[count-your-change]

Not too far into the interview is the none too subtle charge that to not accept evolution as fact may well indicate a person is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, unless one is a child in fact.

“The motivation for looking at Alzheimer's disease patients was that they have some of the characteristics of healthy adults, they have undergone normal cognitive development, they have undergone normal science education, and so on. On the other hand, because of their memory impairments, they may not be able to access the kinds of rich caus[al] beliefs that most adults consult when evaluating explanations. In that sense, they might be somewhat like the preschoolers who haven't yet acquired certain kinds of scientific beliefs. So looking at the Alzheimer's patients allows us to see whether or not you see that population falling back on this kind of preference for purposive explanations in the absence of the kinds of alternatives that most healthy adults have available, like the idea that rain results from water condensing in clouds. In fact, what you find is that if you do a task like the one I described with preschool children with the Alzheimer's disease patient’s—so [if you] ask them, “Why is there rain? Is there rain because water condenses in clouds or is there rain so that plants and animals can grow?”—they will also prefer the teleological option much more often either than healthy young adults or their age matched controlled participants who are the same age as the Alzheimer's patients but don't show signs of Alzheimer's.”

Doctors test for Alzheimer's disease by asking questions that require varying levels of reasoning and memory.
Now here the statement is being made that offering a teleological explanation may indicate incipient disease unless one is a child because healthy adults of the same age tend to not offer such teleological explanations.

A point well made in the interview is that when people are asked about belief in evolution the questioner has to be careful about defining the terms of the question.

“Lombrozo: Different questionnaires will find different numbers; you do typically find that if you give people that option you get what looks like a larger numbers of people accepting evolution. What gets a little bit tricky is that when you ask people whether or not they accept a position like theistic evolution, you don't quite know what it is that they are endorsing if they say they accept evolution. So you might have people who end up falling into that bucket who think that plants and animals evolved but that humans were created in their present world, for example. Another fairly common view is someone who will accept microevolution—the idea that a given species can change slightly over time—but not macroevolution, the idea that you might get one species from a different species. So you really have to be careful about what it is you are asking people to accept and making sure they understand what it is you're asking them to accept in order to even make assessments of what kinds of views people have.”

Left out is that evolution has been defined so broadly that almost anything can be cited as an example of its occurrence from such superficial traits as color of an animals coat to whether or not animals will mate.

I'll have to come back later to this.

[metmom]

Lombrozo: I think it has a couple of consequences. So, one of them is that any kind of educational intervention that increases people's understanding of evolutionary theory is not necessarily going to have a consequence to whether or not people accept evolution. I think that's surprising, but it also raises a lot of complicated ethical issues; whether or not it's even appropriate in the classroom for teachers to be trying to deliberately influence students' acceptance of evolution as opposed to whether or not they understand it. We normally think about the role of education as being one to communicate basic concepts, to communicate scientific theories, not to actually change whether or not people accept a particular theory that might conflict with their relative views. So I think it raises some complicated issues there.

A refreshingly open viewpoint.

[RichInOC]

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...

“When you believe in things that you don’t understand
“Then you suffer...
“Superstition ain’t the way!”