ISTM that (some) people of all political, social or scientific stripes like to claim that the opposing side *knows *something to be true, yet denies it (or, *knows *something to be false, yet claims it to be true.)
So what are some examples of this? (If someone *genuinely *believes that vaccines cause autism, for instance, that doesn’t fit the criteria of the thread, since it’s a *sincere *belief - it has to be surface denial on the outside while deep down knowing the truth.)
Usually those things require a believer to consciously choose to be ignorant; to make an effort NOT to learn the truth about something. I suspect that this is because on some level they know the what’s true and what’s not. So I wouldn’t necessarily exempt your examples.
It doesn’t happen too very often to ordinary people, but it can certainly happen among “expert witnesses” who are highly paid to testify that, for example, cigarettes are not a cause of lung disease.
Very often this fall under the category of " Principles before personality" I tend to loose respect for people who put personality before integrity. I am sad to say I see this in my own family and almost all my associates and it has driven me more and more into seclusion. I don’t mind if a person says. " yes he is guilty of all those things and seems to lack character but what he is doing is very important so I will support him" But to deny the bad things pisses me off.
On the same note to deny good things a person is doing because you are against his platform is just as irritating.
I honestly think in the age of Trump this has become far more prevalent among ordinary people. Most Trump voters backed him because he validated their racism. But they’re still afraid to own that and so they talk about the economy or trade or some such nonsense that they don’t even understand.
How about the “Russians stole the election” theory?
There seem to be lots of people who know the simple mathematical facts,yet refuse to acknowledge them.
(After all, it’s pretty simple to count to 270. But, as in most conspiracy theories, the psychological need to believe in a fantasy overpowers the facts.)
How about college professors who begin a lecture explaining that race is strictly a social construct and has no scientific basis, then minutes later demonstrate to the class how to determine the race of skeletal remains.
I think most people in the anti-abortion movement know that making abortion illegal isn’t going to stop women from having abortions. It’s only going to make it much more likely that women will be harmed from abortions and the anti-abortion movement likes that idea.
Surely you meant the other way around? Many may claim that the President doesn’t matter, or Hillary would have been just as bad, but they can see by now that it does matter.
I don’t think this is it at all, I think many anti abortion folks like everything about abortion if they could only find a way to not be able to call it murder.
As a former Christian, I’ve come to think that the far majority of Christians don’t really believe in their religion. The ones who really believe in it are the ones preaching on street corners.
Imagine if the afterlife was real. That there were pamphlets for both heaven and hell that you could look at and everyone knew that this is where you go when you die. Heaven was on a beautiful tropical island where you live for eternity, eating and never getting fat, laying out in the sun while hot, shirtless helpers fan you with giant leaves and unicorns and fairies bring you fresh beverages that taste like rainbows.
The pamphlet for hell shows that you’ll spend eternity living in squalor in a shanty in Haiti. Sleeping in filth, fighting for scraps of garbage and daily baths in fire.
All you have to do to get to the first one is follow these beliefs for 80 or so years and Bob’s your uncle - You’re in!! But don’t follow these rules and off you go to hell.
Only the mentally ill would end up in hell because everyone else would follow the rules completely because everyone would know heaven and hell were real and being a good person for 80 years would be a walk in the park, knowing what you would get in return.
Conservatives regularly accuse liberals of supporting mass immigration because immigrants overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, yet liberals always deny this. If immigrants and their descendants voted overwhelming conservative I find it difficult to believe both parties wouldn’t reverse their stances. Conservatives would say immigrants are hard-working, traditional religious folks who pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and exemplify what America is all about, and liberals would say they depress the wages of minority workers and their regressive social policies threaten American’s most vulnerable citizens.
Maybe. One of the empirically testable features of the conservative/liberal divide is that liberals feel less “disgust” where “disgust” is defined as negative feelings towards things that are perceived as inappropriate in their culture.