FROM time to time we’ve attempted to imagine what it must be like to have the mind of a creationist, but we’ve never quite figured it out. We suspect that most such people were born with entirely adequate brains, but something went wrong during their formative years. Somehow they’ve lost their once-natural curiosity and ability to reason.
Today we’re going to try a limited exploration of this subject by discussing the second of the Three Laws of Creationism. They were first stated here, but we’ll repeat the full set for convenience:
First Law: Creationists always lie (that is, promoting creationism is more important than honesty).
Second Law: Creationists think everything is religion (especially science).
Third Law: Creationism means never having to say you’re sorry (thus they never admit mistakes).
Why do creationists think everything is religion? We suspect it’s because — to the extent they’ve learned any philosophy, formally or otherwise — they’ve been taught that everything of value is based on deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is alien to their experience.
Deductive reasoning is both simple and certain, thus its seductive power. The classic example is: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. If the premise is true (All men are mortal) then the conclusion is true. Absolutely. Problems, if any, are not in the structure of such an argument (which is logically valid), but in the truth of its premises.
Religion is a field of knowledge which is based on deductive reasoning. If the revealed premises are true, all else logically follows. And if a religion’s premises are accepted on faith — as they must be — then that’s the whole deal. No doubts, no worries.
Inductive reasoning lies at the heart of the scientific method, by which numerous factual observations are synthesized into descriptive laws of nature and explanatory theories. This method of reasoning is sometimes criticized because — unlike deduction — its conclusions aren’t logically certain. We know that. It’s why science is all about tests (experiments and observations), and making corrections when necessary.
Science isn’t limited to inductive reasoning. Well-established scientific laws and theories are tentatively presumed true for purposes of research, and — by deductive reasoning — predictions are made which can then be tested. If the predictions don’t work out, we know there’s a problem with the premises. Back to the ol’ drawing board.
The great virtue of science’s being based on inductive reasoning is that it’s always grounded in verifiable reality. Deductive reasoning is used as a tool for testing the results of inductive reasoning. Got that? Deduction is only a tool of science; it’s not the whole game.
Unlike religion, however, the inductive reasoning in science doesn’t deal in certainty. Thus the revulsion that some exhibit when confronted with the teachings of science. Some people want certainty all the time, no matter what. And although science has a remarkable record of success, it will never deliver the comforting certainty that such people find only in religion.
That’s one problem that creationists have with science — no certainty. Well, there is some. There’s the certainty that some ideas are demonstrably false, and others have so far been consistently successful. But there’s always the possibility that today’s theories may one day be proven inadequate, and there are those who find this intolerable. Thus, inductophobia.
But there’s something else too, and it mostly applies to those with limited educations. If the only thing someone knows is a specific version of a religion, and he’s been taught since childhood that everything else depends on that, then it’s catastrophic to learn that some detail of his religion may be in error, for then the foundation of all his knowledge is swept away.
The mind that has accepted such a worldview is essentially a fragile house of cards. If one part fails, the whole structure collapses. There’s no such thing as going back to the drawing board to revisit one’s premises. Even something as trivial as the literal reality of Noah’s Ark must be true; and certainly there can be no questioning of the six-day creation account. No metaphors! Any discovery that appears to challenge any element of the deductively-derived house of cards must be the subject of an all-out attack as being anti-God, anti-family, anti-country, etc. There are no subtleties here, no compromises. It’s all or nothing.
But science isn’t “anti-God, anti-family” etc. Nor is it a competing religion. It’s a method of acquiring knowledge that is independent of anyone’s personal religion. Note carefully that this doesn’t imply hostility to religion — only that science is a separate, autonomous system of acquiring knowledge.
But that raises another problem. If, as part of someone’s religious instruction, he has not only been taught that his religion is true, but that it’s the only truth, and all else is evil, then his education includes what might be called an intellectual “chastity belt.” Nothing new or different is allowed to get in.
With such a chastity belt around his brain, a creationist will always be limited to what he learned as a child, unless he can somehow break through that barrier. If this is someone’s personal situation, it’s entirely his affair. Millions find happiness in this way, and we wish them well.
But it becomes everyone’s problem if the creationist tries to impose that chastity belt on others.
See also: What Is “Critical Thinking”?
Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
“But it becomes everyone’s problem if the creationist tries to impose that chastity belt on others.”
You can say THAT again!!
Colloquy says: “You can say THAT again!!”
I probably will.
In my area the great defenders of creationism are clergy. I just assume they attack the TOE to protect the collection plate from erosion.
Preachers probably do feel financially threatened by evolution, but I bet virtually all of them are creationists and that’s why they attack science.
“what it must be like to have the mind of a creationist” is an extremely interesting question. I suggest the answer might be very simple: they’re just plain stupid. It’s true that they’ve been brainwashed since childhood, but if they had any intelligence at all they should have been able to recover from their indoctrination.
It’s difficult for me to be sure about what their problem is, because I just can’t imagine myself being an evolution denier. The first time I ever heard of evolution, before knowing anything about it, I thought, sure, this must be true. It’s the only possible explanation for the diversity of life.
Now after spending a few years studying the evidence I’m absolutely certain evolution is a fact. Creationists refuse to understand this evidence. They reject it without thinking. There’s something terribly wrong with them. Perhaps it’s some incurable mental illness.
One possibility comes to mind, a paraphrasing of the line Jack Nicholson’s character, “Melvin Udall,” a successful fiction writer, says in the film “As Good as it Gets” :
Ergo, a Creationist thinks like an Evolutionist with his logic and ability to reason taken away.
bobxxxx says: “I suggest the answer might be very simple: they’re just plain stupid.”
Some certainly are, but it’s far too easy an answer for all of them. It’s something else. Maybe I’ll never understand it.
Longie says: “Ergo, a Creationist thinks like an Evolutionist with his logic and ability to reason taken away.”
Good description, but what does it to them?
Buying into a brittle belief system that is not grounded in reality, and which cannot withstand being questioned without falling apart — a House of Cards — as I believe you characterized it.
They are too invested in their belief system, and it’s too brittle to be questioned in any way without crashing down around them, leaving them with nothing to hold onto. Ergo, they MUST defend it at all costs, and science poses the single greatest challenge to any belief system based on the literal truth of a book full of sheep herder tales told thousands of years ago.
Once such a system is set up, it is impervious to self-correction to fit reality as science reveals it over time. That’s where the brittleness comes from. The uneducated sheep herders answers have to always be “right” — the TRUTH™ — no matter what. Thus, when science proposes an alternative explanation, it must be wrong, because it contradicts that which the Creationist thinks can never be wrong.
It may have worked as a philosophy for sheep herders several thousand years ago, but it sure sucks as a substitute for educated thinking.
Longie says: “It may have worked as a philosophy for sheep herders several thousand years ago, but it sure sucks as a substitute for educated thinking.”
Nooooooooooo! Then there’s no truth! No morality! We’ll behave like animals!
SC, maybe you need to brush up on the problem of induction.
Let’s say I see, over the course of a few years, a thousand black crows. I propose my law, “All crows are black”, and every time I see a black crow my inductive law becomes more valid, correct?
The law “All crows are black” is logically equivalent to “All non-black objects are not crows”, as you can see if you draw the Venn diagram.
So, now every time I see a white swan, or pink socks, my inductive law about black crows becomes more valid.
I trust you see the difficulty.
Gabriel Hanna says: “I trust you see the difficulty.”
Sure. I said that induction doesn’t provide the logical certainty that deduction does. Hey, welcome aboard.
Mmm, I’m baby-sitting long calculations and waiting for epoxy to dry. Not saying that your blog isn’t interesting.
But the point is that observed instances of pink socks and white swans don’t tell you squat about if crows are black; and logically then black crows don’t tell you if crows are black.
It’s not just that induction is LESS certain; on its own it is worthless.
There’s also the fork Hume is going to stab you with, but that’s another story.
Gabriel Hanna says: “It’s not just that induction is LESS certain; on its own it is worthless.”
Not entirely worthless. It does summarize observations, and although it’s an error to prematurely codify any supposed “laws” that may be suggested, they can be provisionally used to make predictions. Hey, that’s why we test our theories.
they can be provisionally used to make predictions…
Then Hume stabs you with his fork.
And failed predictions can be blamed on auxiliary hypotheses… it’s a tough problem.
Not many working scientists bother with philosophy of science, but I am not a very hard working scientist.
This was on talkorigins, it is from a criticism of Dembski written by a physicist:
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm
First, biologists in particular and scientists in general are horribly confused defenders of their field. When responding to attacks from non-scientists, rather than attempt the rigor that the geometry of induction and similar bodies of statistics provide, they fall back on Popperian incantations, trying to browbeat their opponents into acceding to the homily that if one follows certain magic rituals—the vaunted “scientific method”—then one is rewarded with The Truth. No mathematically precise derivation of these rituals from first principles is provided. The “scientific method” is treated as a first-category topic, opening it up to all kinds of attack. In particular, in defending neo-Darwinism, no admission is allowed that different scientific disciplines simply cannot reach the same level of certainty in their conclusions due to intrinsic differences in the accessibility of the domains they study.
This intrinsic lower certainty of neo-Darwinism than (for example) that of quantum electrodynamics means that there is legitimate room for disputation concerning the history of biology on Earth. So if Dembski had managed to use the geometry of induction properly to quantify that some search algorithm occurring in the biological world had, somehow, worked better than all but the fraction 10^{-50} (say) of alternative algorithms, then there would be a major mystery concerning the modern biological mantra. This would be true regardless of whether neo-Darwinists had performed the proper rituals in settling on that mantra.
Curm, there’s a fellow by the name of Ken Heilman at U Florida who’s done some work with brain imaging. He feels it may be related to frontal lobe injury.
I also came across something over the past year to the effect that Christian homeschooled children grow up to be good at deductive reasoning, as it’s been constantly reinforced, but poor at inductive reasoning, as its been discouraged. I’d suggest the neural connections haven’t developed. I have no trouble seeing them as developmentally disabled, but I don’t say it to foster compassion, but rather because I’m in favor of limiting their input regarding public policy.
Then, of course, there’s Altemeyer’s authoritarianism. There are numerous ways of understanding this phenomenon, and they probably all have some validity.
Jeff Eyges says:
I toyed with that idea once, but I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out. My humble effort is here: The Mind of a Creationist — Inductophobia.
Right – this is the post!
Jeff Eyges, I didn’t notice you were commenting to this post. I see all comments consecutively on a separate screen.
I figured.
I’d really prefer we didn’t medicalize the problem.
It is a way of dismissing your opponents without engaging them.
Arguments from authority and deductive reasoning are deeply ingrained in the human psyche. What creationists are doing is NATURAL to humans, and science is quite UNNATURAL. Which is why it took so long to figure out how to do it, and why so few people are able to do it.