Cooking the Evidence

I was just reading about an interesting phenomena. People tend to pay much more attention to the facts and observations that confirm what they already believe. That tendency helps us choose our friends and our reading material, but probably does not make us as aware of reality as we should be.

Today I was approached by someone who blatantly lied to himself so that he could validate his world view. In this case he swore that all the medical records and studies of human anatomy showed that men had one fewer rib on one side of their bodies than on the other. Of course his explanation for this was the story in Genesis in which God took a rib from Adam's side to create Eve.

If we are so attached to our world view that reality has no effect on our minds, then we are totally damned in our progress.

I'm afraid that applying the theory of evolution to memes shows that my view is doomed. Truth, or at least theories that take reality and facts into account, have absolutely no evolutionary advantage over fabricated stories that offer absolute certainty, since reality often provides only uncertainty.

I'll just have to live with being unpopular and still having hope for mankind.

troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com