rationalskepticism.org

RealityRules wrote:

Stein wrote:Illuminating piece here on how disinformation gets swallowed by cults and cranks:

"“We have an emotional relationship to information. It is not rational,” Wardle said. But people who work in the “quality information space”, Wardle’s term for journalists, scientists, researchers and factcheckers, still often act as if information-processing were fundamentally rational, rather than deeply tied to feelings and the way a person expresses their identity.

It’s crucial to understand that the way people process information is through entire narratives, not individual facts, Wardle said. Trying to combat disinformation through factchecking or debunking individual false claims just turns into an endless, fruitless game of “whack-a-mole”."

-- I have even encountered some mythicists who are defrnsive and prickly about the Roman Empire, as a result, as if it could do no wrong!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... SApp_Other



Stein

DEFENSIVE? and PRICKLY? I’ll give you DEFENSIVE and PRICKLY!

I’ll even do a Stein & give you a complete red herring or two

Stein wrote:
Anyone who discounts A CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT OF A FAMILY MEMBER IN A NON-HAGIOGRAPHIC SOURCE has swallowed the Kool-Aid and is the same as one of those terrorists who discount A BIDEN VICTORY DULY ACCEPTED BY REPUBLICAN JUDGES.

Stein

Also fallacious was the attempt to implicate mythicises are racists.

A conspiracy theory typical of a QAnon Trumper: see https://www.abc.net.au/religion/why-are ... s/13003550

Why are so many Christians to be found in the ranks of today’s conspiracy theorists? Just consider the popularity of a movement like QAnon — which claims that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against “a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles” — among evangelicals ...

The Christian believes there is more to reality than meets the eye. The apostle Paul wrote to an early church community, “we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And Jesus [allegedly] taught his disciples, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 19:29). I cannot see or observe God as I might a cell under a microscope, and so I live by faith or trust in God’s previous revelation in ‘history’.

On account of such beliefs, David Robertson argues that conspiracy theories and Christianity are evidentially equivalent: “from a philosophical point of view, there is nothing inherently more irrational about any of these [conspiratorial] claims” when compared to Christian belief. The reason QAnon is deemed odd, but not Christianity, is purely contextual — the result of a developed acceptability over time.
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/why-are ... s/13003550