Irrational beliefs

I don't agree that science is rubbish at human nature. It's just that we are very, very early in the application of genuine scientific methods to exploring human psychology (e.g. psychoanalysis, which dominated psychology for decades was about as unscientific as you can get).

It's science that discovered that people with autistic spectrum disorder aren't just odd, lazy and rude, which is how the humanities always interpreted them. Ditto for people with specific learning difficulties, mental illnesses etc - all our genuine understanding of those has come from science.

Science is great for physical things and natural world, rubbish at human nature though.

Yes, I think what I mean is that it is widely accepted in our society that if something ostensibly has the backing of science, it is more respected.

I always had this theory that it’s human nature to belief in a god of some sort, it’s like a need that faith/ religion fulfils, a human need that cannot be met by science. Rational thinking and logic cannot simply talk us out of having this need. Even when you take away religion/faith and pretend it doesn’t matter, the need does not go away.

But there's a significant section of society that doesn't really hold science in high regard. Humanities teaching is often subtly or not so subtly anti-science and technology, for example.

I came across this earlier this morning: Jane Clare Jones tweeted regarding the belief of some humanities academics in “discourse” and its power:

It's like they've all got these insane God-complexes. Like they think they actually speak the whole world into existence, and they can just speak it out again.

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1061710838208303105

For some reason, those words really resonated with me. I’m trying to think it through: how does this link to other social, historical, psychological phenomena? I’m thinking magicians, shamans, Faust, priestly caste, curses….is there actually a link here? Some underlying psychological tendency in the human mind expressing itself in a novel “modern” way via the notion of “discourse”?

Yes! It's tremendously disheartening to see such an eager embrace of anything and everything that makes no sense whatsoever.

I've been trying to work out why, in an age of such freely available knowledge, astonishing scientific advances, and despite relative freedom, so many people are eager to subsume all this for pure fancy.

I well understand the religious impulse in human nature. I don't have an issue with people finding comfort in anything that helps them to be better people. But it's like the pendulum swings away from organized religion and does not rest in sensible rationality with an allowance for individual freedom, it goes so far to the other extreme that the language of rational science is itself co-opted as part of a strange religious impulse that also incorporates sheer superstition.

Its very easy to mock religious feeling, however it manifests - but we should probably be asking why science and rational thinking have so little sway when science at least is still held in such high regard in our society.

He’s quite funny but I think he’s in danger of walking the Izzard path.

Urgh that Joe Lycett interview! Just idiotic

I thought exactly the same.

And we’ve just had Joe Lycett and Sara Cox wittering on about gender(s) on Chain Reaction. And with a complete lack of appreciation of the irony he then took the piss out of those annoying ‘uplifting’ memes that not-very-bright people share on SM.

I was hopeful that science and rationality were winning but it does seem like we’re madly dashing back to superstition.