Navigator said:
Understanding And Appreciation For The Santa Myth
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http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39076
I would like to say first of all that I appreciate what it is James is endeavouring to do. I am here to learn, not to criticise.
Well, I did read the other thread, and it came across as the same tired old "science isn't everything!" rant. But my policy is to offer good faith whenever possible, so I'll take you at your word here.
First of all, there exists a science which specifically studies the function of mythological constructs. It's called "anthropology." It's still rough and underdeveloped, but then again, as a science, it's far younger than the four centuries that mainstream physics has been around.
Second of all, the million-dollar prize grew up in a history that you may be too young to remember. Back during the 1970s, a lot of people who claimed supernatural power got tested by physicists, who declared the power genuine. This is important, as it has always been the paranormalists who deliberately sought out scientific
imprimateur.
Randi, being a conjuror, saw through these as simple illusions and set out to demonstrate this. He concluded, I think correctly, that trained physicists were not necessarily the best people in the world to do this, as the things they worked with every day, such as electrons, never set out to deceive. (Of course, some physicists
are good at doing this, and Randi made a notable exception for Dick Feynman. It's just that training in pysics does not by itself convey a deep understanding of trickery, while skill as a conjurer is essentially all about deep understanding of trickery.)
So, originally and still primarily, the work of Randi and the majority of skeptics has not been to smoosh out everybody's fun mythology, but to combat what amounts to fraud and confidence artistry.
“Why do individuals believe in mythology?”
Hypothesis
Individuals believe in myth because they are trained to from their earliest years.
Q: Is the above statement the truth? [/B]
I would have to disagree with this. People believe in myths because that seems to be one of the most basic ways in which human beings see the world. I am using the term "myth" in the broadest possible sense here, a mythological construct. In this use of the term "myth," a myth is not necessarily false, nor does the value of a myth necessarily originate in how accurately it describes the world.
Some may argue that this usage of the term "myth" is overbroad. The dictionaries will tell you that a myth must have other qualities, such as being very old, widely believed, or a fiction or half-truth. I'm using the term more like it is technically used in anthropology. A myth is, bare bones, is a story that is explanatory or resonates with the values of a culture, community, or even an individual. That way, we can include personal or family myths (which exist but which are not popular), myths which are not fictional and can serve as useful models (such as the electron), and myths which are not ancient (such as
Batman or suburban life or George Washinton and the cherry tree). We can also accept something as a myth without inherently making a value judgement or factual judgment, which I think is essential, as putting such a judgement on something at the time it is declared to be a myth is pretty much the same thing as begging the question. If we didn't do that, we would get into lines of reasoning like "a myth is by definition a fiction or half-truth, therefore people believe them for that reason," which seem to me bogus arguments.
I think that's more useful, because then the parts of the more restrictive definitions can be tested as things that might make certain myths more appealing than others. First, we can try to see if the appeal of certain myths is, possibly, due to some combination of appeals. This may turn out to be untrue, but it does us no harm to investigate it. I'll try to characterize these aspects as strong or weak supporters or discouragers.
In that regard, your suggestion may account for some belief, but it does not account for myths acquired or developed at a later age, such as for many people Born-Again Christianity, Skepticism, the Electron, the leftist swing that often happens to rich kids when they get to college, the rightist swing that often happens to poor kids when they get to college,
etc. So, I would say that this evidence shows that the influence of early indoctrination is, at best, a weak supporter.
There is one major gap in my counterargument, however. Myths may also compete against each other within a human brain. In this case, sometimes one loses, and sometimes one gets twisted to conform to the other; I base these assumptions on cognitive psychology, which seems to me the best sort of psychology to date. There seem to be some myths that are hard-wired in, such as the perception of the self as a monadic consciousness, the drive for self-preservation, and the sex drive. Other myths, like the myth of the family, are indoctrinated into those lucky enough to have been born into functional families. Still others, like the myth of the in-group and its inherent superiority to others (racism and speciesism) seem to be developmental adaptations; the seed for the myth is hard-wired, but its expression is due to culture.
Sometimes, though, these conflicts are complex. There really is little or nothing in the myth of evolution by natural selection that should particularly cause cognitive dissonance with the myth of Christianity. Yet many modern Christians seem to look for ways to find a conflict. In these cases, I would look for other myths that play into it.
How about fiction? People like fiction, but most of them know that it's fiction. Seeking belief in fictions would seem to me to be a good way to get killed, and probably an anti-survival trait against which there is evolutatiory pressure. However, many of the myths that people believe in are fictions and half-truths, so I would say that the accuracy of a myth is only a weak supporter, and that there must be stronger supporters out there.
Cultural and individual relevance are probably strong supporters. Life in a society largely consists of two strong but seemingly opposing needs: the need to fit into a community and the need to stand above a community. The appeal for a myth that supports whichever one is focusing on this week seems fairly clear. So I'd say this is a strong supporter.
The weirdness of a myth can go either way. Many people believe in weird New Age ideas, but many also reject modern physics because it's too weird. Here it's also complex, because some people believe they understand modern physics as a New Age concept, but this always seems to require getting the physics wrong. So I'd have to say that this can be a strong supporter or strong discourager.
The ease of understanding a myth is probably a strong supporter.
Now, at this point, I'm getting the impression that some sort of overall decision about why people believe myths is maybe impossible. So it might be better to start with individual instances of myths and see what their appeals are. So we'd have to contruct meta-myths about individual myths and their uses. But I'm getting tired of typing, so I'll turn over the talking stick to someone else.
