Most of the people I hang out with are atheists. The question of religion rarely comes up. But, I have friends who think man never walked on the moon. Or that climate change is not real.Not much I can do about the moon, but the climate change thing really gets to me.
I reference the scientists, but no, can’t believe it. It’s not a religion! It’s fact! But oh no, the earth has gone through cold-warm cycles before. So I say well, we know that because of scientists, but you refuse to accept the same scientists when they tell you climate change now is man made.
So, i called them ignorant by choice. That’s the way I see it, they choose to be ignorant.
But I was told I was being rude. I didn’t say idiot or stupid or even ignorant. I said selective ignorant. How is this bad? It is exactly what they are> Am I wrong here? Was I out of line?
I don’t think “ignorance” is the right word, even if you qualify it with “selective.” It doesn’t sound to me like their problem is a lack of information or awareness.
They are, as much as religious fundamentalists, willfully ignorant, and yes, ignorant is the right word to use here. If they are presented with the facts, evidence, absolute proof by peer reviewed scientists, then they are being willfully ignorant. We walked on the moon, climate change is real, evolution is a fact, the earth is not flat, and if you disagree with those facts, then you are ignorant, willfully or otherwise.
…And you call yourself a Nice Guy, Jack?
My aunt is like this. She is highly educated, great at math, understands real estate and business very sharply…and is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and Flat-Earther. Her logic is basically: If she can point out one flaw in your case, you’re done, but no matter how many flaws there are in her case, her argument remains intact.
It is a cherry-picking buffet of information and selective ignorance, as the OP says.
Unfortunately climate change (and many other aspects of science) are not easy to understand. As an example, I studied biology and got really good at some aspects (such as genetics) but would have a hard time explaining evolution to someone who has no scientific knowledge. It would be even harder if they have a vested interested in not believing in evolution (eg they belong to some religions).
Climate change is even harder. It’s become incredibly politicized and the green movement has been really bad at talking about it. If you believe in it, you are expected to change your lifestyle, likely to be less enjoyable… so there’s another reason not to believe in it. It’s hard to get people to think about the future. It’s even harder to get people to perceive the risks. Headlines that we soon will be unable to stop temperature increases of 2 degrees Celsius don’t provoke outrage and aren’t viewed as credible. (They should also use the term Fahrenheit if the intent is to convince Americans.) According to Peter Sandman, a risk communication specialist, “the most important truth in risk communication is the exceedingly low correlation between whether a risk is dangerous, and whether it’s upsetting”. This applies to climate change, vaccines, and many other issues.
Many of the political solutions are unpopular, or worse, are grafted on to other more political issues, such as a carbon tax linked to an income tax cut. Who would benefit? (Cue one party, at least, not agreeing with the plan.) When revenue drops due to the use of less carbon, are you now going to raise taxes to make up the shortfall? Which taxes, and if you’re raising income taxes, who are you going to raise those taxes on? Does anyone ever believe a politician who utters the words “revenue neutral”?
(Personally I’d like to see a carbon tax act like a “sin tax”, which is not pretending to be revenue neutral. Charge it to polluters, not the consumers. The consumers would, of course, pay higher prices because the costs will be passed on to them, but it won’t be in their face. Consumers would either pay higher prices (with that money going toward fighting for the environment) or they’ll move toward more sustainable and cheaper options. However that would make things more expensive, so it’s probably not popular enough to be politically possible.)
Oh? It’s never struck me a difficult concept. Yes, the Earth has undergone cooling and warming cycles many times, but human industrial activity promises to cause a warming cycle much much faster than any previous cycle, on the order of a few centuries instead of over several thousand years.
I’m not sure about this, either. If the person is open to the concept and doesn’t have some religious or religious-like anti-evolution preconceptions, I don’t think it would be hard to describe how not all babies are alike; that some babies have a very tiny advantage that gives them a slightly better chance of living long enough to have babies of their own, and if you spin this out over a few thousand generations, you’ll see the tiny traits that gave the original babies their slight advantage becoming more and more reinforced in their descendants to the point where the descendants might look significantly different from the original babies. You don’t have to invoke genetics or mutation right away, just point out that while a baby inherits traits from its mother and father, it doesn’t get them to exactly the same degree as its mother or father - some traits will be more pronounced or less pronounced, and this mix can offer a tiny advantage or a tiny disadvantage. If the tiny-disadvantage baby has babies of their own and passes on this tiny disadvantage, eventually luck will catch up to them and that branch of the family will reach a generation that doesn’t have successful babies and will come to an end. Meanwhile, the original baby’s sibling who by luck got a tiny advantage and managed to pass it on is more likely to have his or her branch of the family continue, all of whom have inherited the tiny advantage. Within that branch, the babies who randomly get more of the tiny advantage have an even better chance at survival and a hundred generations later, the tiny advantage is on full display and it might become difficult to picture how a baby could survive without it. Until the environment suddenly changes and the advantage is now a liability, and if all the members of that family have come to depend on their advantage and now it’s a problem, that family quickly goes extinct. “Look at me, I’m a bird on an island from a whole family of birds who get by just fine and don’t waste energy on running away from things because there’s nothing to run away from. Wait a sec, somebody brought a cat to the island, I wonder how this will play out…”
A reasonably bright eight year-old who understands babies are not brought by storks (or some similar magical origin) could probably grasp this, assuming there isn’t some adult in their lives who is simultaneously telling them contrary nonsense.
I think this is hard to understand for many people, since it requires an understanding of statistics, or that many species will not be able to adapt to these fast changes, or what an average of a 2 degree Celsius increase means.
I don’t think climate change should be difficult to understand. Start with the greenhouse effect. Does earth become as cold as the vacuum of space at night? No. OK, so we agree that the atmosphere can hold energy as heat. Does sunlight cease to exist when it hits the earth? No. Nothing ceases to exist, visible light becomes infrared light, and radiates heat into its surroundings. What color is carbon dioxide? Infrared, so it reflects infrared light.
Etc.
It’s not general relativity. It’s the water cycle. My 10 year-old gets it.
Perhaps instead of ignorance, “irrational” might be perceived as less offensive.
Works WRT religion as well. Why do such folk choose to be irrational WRT this ONE specific supernatural phenomenon, but purport to be rational and evidence-based in most/all other aspects of their lives?
I think everyone has an irrational blind spot, some might be atheists but still believe in ghosts, some may not believe in heaven but believe in reincarnation, some may hold to conspiracy theories. No one is 100% rational all the time.
I assume you’ve mever heard the reaction of a theist when told that their believing in something with no evidence - or believing in something against evidence - is not a rational belief. It is not pretty. They say that you are accusing them of being irrational.
I think we’ve seen instances of this right here, but I’m not going to search for them.
Calling them ignorant is polite. Nastier things to call them would be stupid, liars, or irrational, or too stubborn to see the truth given the evidence.
Maybe you could ask them what they would call a Flat Earther. Saying that the moon landing is a hoax is about as bad as that.
Right. Then you can inform them that they are ignorant of the definition of that term. 
I too have an aunt like this: she was a scientist, a PhD microbiologist for like 50 some years at NIH, but in her retirement she constantly puts up crap on Facebook like the idiotic “moneybags” thing (“There are 5 Saturdays this month. This only occurs every 823 years…”). Basic arithmetic should tell you this is patently ludicrous. It doesn’t even remotely pass the sniff test. I usually correct her as politely as I can, but honestly its making me lose respect for her.
She’s in her early 80s but she’s not suffering any sort of neurological degeneration; she’s still just as sharp as ever. I suppose it could be chalked up to just clicking the “share” button mindlessly, but still.
I think that what you are talking about is confirmation bias. Rather than collecting evidence and then accepting or reject a conclusion depending on whether it is supported by the evidence, they start with a conclusion and then accept and reject evidence based on whether it supports the their per-determined conclusion. It is irrational and non-scientific but it is very very human.
I think where the OP is coming from is stronger than confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is unconscious whereas selective ignorance is completely intentional. Flat-Earth is a perfect example of this. It not just that they don’t see counter evidence. The actively say “Round Earthers have never shown X” even after they are repeatedly show science has proven X. Or they do an experiment that a) is counter to their hypothesis and b) shows a round Earth but then deliberately try to explain it away in a way that make less sense.
I guess I’m sensitive to this word choice, because I generally consider the term “rational Humanist” to be the best description of my personal philosophy/worldview. Allows me to “define” myself differently from identifying one specific supernatural concept that I reject.
Also, in my experience, people are AT LEAST as likely to be offended by being called ignorant, not realizing it solely refers to a lack of knowledge, as opposed to “stupidity.”
There is essentially no chance of communicating w/ someone on anything more complex than the current weather, if the parties are not able to agree upon the definition of the terms they use.
The difference between science and religion is that science is knowable.
Sure, you and I might not have the necessary knowledge, so we have to just believe scientists when they tell us about climate change or evolution. But that’s just our choice. If we really wanted to know the science, we could go to college, get degrees in the applicable sciences, collect and review the evidence, and prove to ourselves that these things are true. We can prove these things are true if we’re willing to do the work.
Religion doesn’t work like that. Religions are ultimately about faith. Even if you spend years studying the religion, you’re still going to reach a point where your learning will stop and you will confront something you can’t know through learning. At that point, you will just have to decide whether or not to believe without any evidence if it’s true or false.
But I feel there’s a difference between people who are ignorant through a lack of opportunity to know something and people who are ignorant because they have chosen to not know it even if they easily could have. When people choose to be ignorant, I feel they are stupid to have made that decision.