Hmm, so that makes me think then can any of us ‘really’ think, taking George Lakoff’s views of metaphor being actual structures in the brain?

Maybe this fits in with when you really pay attention to your thoughts and emotions, you find out that they are like weather, they aren’t permanent and they don’t seem to be controlled by an “I”, the “I” being a helpful illusion. Perhaps thoughts and emotions, just like weather, aren’t just internal events but also are external, influenced by processes like magnetic fields, what we ate, what we have learned, what our gender is, etc etc etc.

So perhaps it would behoove us all to be educated in something like Buddhism, a science of the mind that teaches us to be more aware and mindful (lays down ‘aware’ and ‘mindfull’ pipes?)

Not so long ago, a large chunk of the country believed – with great passion and conviction – that races should remain segregated, that African Americans are inferior and cannot be allowed to have the same rights as whites, etc, etc. You all know what I’m talking about.

Now, this opinion has changed. Deeply held, identity related positions shifted over a period of a few decades, drastically. Therefore, such deeply held opinions CAN and DO change.

The question is, which strategy worked to change that opinion?

Did the rights workers meekly approach the KKK, and try to explain to them that yes, they are kind of right, but maybe they should reconsider some details…?

Or did they gather and clearly yell into their faces “You are wrong, and you need to change, and you need to change now.”

For extra credit, look at other shifts in major public identity positions in history, and ask the same questions.

22. Mike Says:
May 18th, 2011 at 9:34 pm
I find it ironic that those such as Myers and Dawkins, who claim to be evidence-based, suddenly become faith-based when they talk about communication strategy effectiveness. That is, instead of looking at the vast communications, neuroscience, and psychological literature, they dismiss it in favor of strategies that FEEL right to them. This is the same argument they would denounce if it were coming from a person of faith who, for example, just FEELS that Jesus is in their heart, or a conservative that just FEELS that abstinence-only sexual education programs should be effective, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

Nobody is doing that. PZ said it himself in his post about the PoI interview – the vast communication and psychology literature focuses almost entirely on the short term responses while what we’re targeting here is the long term change. Surgery is traumatic and unpleasant, yet it’s for your long term benefit; it’s the same thing here.

And the New Atheists are very much looking at the evidence – the evidence is that for many decades accomodationism has produced no results; whatever gains have been made are the result of general societal secularization due to other factors. And those gains have not been accompanied by similar gains in rational thinking – it has been a lot more moving away from Christianity into other sorts of woo than moving away from Christianity into a world of sound evidence-based reasoning.

That’s in the US. If you look at other countries, you will see that places where historically there has been strong attacks against religion from the intellectual community like France and Sweden also have the highest number of people professing no belief in Gods, spirits or anything of the sort.

I think it would be more productive if instead of dividing people by categorizing them as accomodationalist (such a loaded term) vs. new atheists, we instead simply look at this as a communication and persuasion issue. Particularly for large secular organizations, if the goal is to communicate a message that will persuade people to change their deeply held beliefs, then would it not make the most sense to (as CM advocates), go to the research and to the experts to learn how best to do so? Why NOT go to those who are applying the scientific method to communication and persuasion? The Republicans are already benefiting from this by using Frank Luntz. Secularists go to Dawkins for evolutionary expertise, deGrasse Tyson for astrophysics expertise, why when it comes to communications and persuasion do secularists suddenly say they will use only personal experience evidence rather than consult an expert and/or the extant research literature??? Why don’t secularists more frequently turn to people such as Luntz, Lakoff (as Chris Mooney mentions), Matt Nisbet, and Robert Cialdini??

By the way, I think that those that refuse to believe communication and psychological research unless it uses new-atheist strategy-specific research studies, are akin to a patient refusing cancer treatment until a study is conducted that tests the treatment’s effectiveness on a participant pool consisting of people IDENTICAL to the patient age, race, weight, hair color, daily sodium intake, etc. I think it makes the most sense to (as CM wrote above) look at the research on how to effectively change deeply held beliefs regardless of the precise topic of those beliefs. The important thing is to understand the mechanism and method of change, not the precise belief.

“Dust and heat” is what we seem to be talking about here. People do not turn their views around instantaneously. But over a period of years, with the issues debated publicly, the weight of argument does have a ponderous effect – even on the religious. The fact that creationists shifted tactics from outright Biblical literalism to ‘creation science’ is evidence of that.

I think there is merit in trying to maintain a sympathetic understanding of one’s opponent, and remain open-minded to the possibility that some of their arguments have merit. At the least, if you can identify the root causes of their misunderstandings, you might have a better chance of addressing them. And simple abuse and hostility is not itself an argument. But at the same time there is no point in compromising on truth and the full strength of your arguments just for the sake of being nice, and not offending. You’re not going to win without offending people, or by holding back.

16. Chris Mooney Says:
May 18th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
That does *not* mean that we can’t refer to other research on how people respond when their core beliefs are deeply challenged, and apply it to this issue. That research is clearly relevant to the topic at hand, because religion is a deeply held belief and part of people’s identity.
You write: “People should absolutely never be putting religion and ideology first and facts and sound reasoning second,” Well yeah, but this is like saying that people should absolutely never act according to human nature. Do you see that?

I think that’s a fallacy – there are more than enough examples (although far less than I would have liked to see) of people who do not put religion and ideology first so I can’t accept equating it with human nature. The reason people do this is because religion and ideology are the dominant cultural paradigms under which they’ve been raised, and as it takes an enormous amount of effort and very special circumstances to overcome those and to teach someone how to think properly, it is no surprise that few people do. It doesn’t mean it can’t be done – I think it can very well be, but it has to start at a very early age.

Yes, our species has all sort of cognitive deficiencies that make us susceptible to sloppy reasoning and superstition, but that’s why we have to actively fight them, not just resign ourselves to the fact. That’s what scientific training is supposed to be

I also am not sure that religion is the “root cause” of our problems; rather, I think that politics, ideology, religion, etc all can cause us to be biased and to “reason” incorrectly. Religion is one source of bias among many–a potent one, to be sure.

There’s some misunderstanding here. The “problem” I was referring to is the fact that religion and ideology have that kind of influence; they are the root cause of all sorts of other problems, but that’s not what I was referring to here. Which is where you and the new atheists (maybe not all of them, I am not sure how many of them see it this way) are talking past each other – you advocate not attacking religion because it is so important to people and instead focusing on keeping religion out of school and other such relatively minor battles, they want religion to lose its importance, which is a more fundamental issue, and which, if resolved, will automatically also solve the problem with creationism.

Same thing with global warming – yes, it’s a very touchy issue because people see its implications as threatening concepts key to their identity. But that’s precisely the point – nothing is ever going to get done about it if those ideas are not dismantled and people’s thinking changed accordingly. And yes, in real life it’s unlikely to to happen, but it will most definitely never happen if we don’t confront that issue directly