Reader offers opposing viewpoints
“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote. However, political conservatism, often accompanied by religious practice, panders to disinformation and government distrust when not empowered, a childish approach to any debate. All the while they attempt to force their ideals on America, despite other prevalent thought, and common sense. This ironically, means exploiting citizens under the same principles they admonish.
Refusal to read various perspectives and contrary opinions, or understand new technology, is their problem. Refusal to keep up should not mean the progression of others should be slowed further by outdates prejudices.
Religious groups and politicians seek to undermine constitutional America by demolishing the first amendment, with opinions based on falsehoods, fiction, self-interest, or plain malice. All the while, zealots push their superstitions while attempting to stifle others who seek the same first amendment protections. Beliefs aren’t the same as collected and analyzed data. Most religious texts have been proven historically and inherently flawed, inaccurate and scientifically false. But the religious, conservative right never let facts get in the way of their crusades.
In fact, it is quite the opposite. A series of recent studies, found that when misinformed citizens, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in biased news stories, minds rarely changed. In fact, beliefs became stronger despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Facts were not a cure for prior misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
This bodes ill for our democracy, because most have bias. Beliefs and a set of purported facts are lodged in our minds. Problem is, sometimes things thought known objectively, are provably false. In the presence of the correct information, reactions differ from the merely uninformed, indifferent blank slates. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper in fiction. And one wonders why religion and racism, along with comparatively poor education rates are prevalent in the bible belt?
This is observed in locally. The term is confirmation bias, a tendency to favor information that confirms a preconceived notion or hypothesis, independent of any basis in truth, fact, or evidence to the contrary. Rather than facts driving beliefs, beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to distort facts to better fit preconceived notions. Even worse, they can lead to uncritical acceptance of bad information because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement breeds more confidence of a hollow righteousness, and even less likely to listen to any new information. It is a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance, and admitting being wrong. Call it being stubborn.
These findings highlight the political ignorance of American citizens to broader questions about relationships between the nature of human intelligence and our democratic ideals. Most like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts, including intent of the Constitution.
Criticism of the biased Christian conservative agenda is not off limits, and should be pursued more vigorously. They only seek to enforce stale conventions not relevant, useful, or even moral in society. New, challenging ideas are uncomfortable, but life is not fully lived in a comfort zone. (Racism and segregation come to mind.) Faith requires little actual knowledge of the world, and psychologists have described religion as a mental handicap with no sense of actual history, or one’s place in it.
No one group has a monopoly on God, or the infinite unknown. No religion or political party is to be entrusted with such a matter. Religion breeds distrust in man with initial sin, and places barriers between faithful fictions and verifiable facts. Religion and related politics are the soap operas of the day, led by Fox. It is fictional fast food for the feeble mind.
Christopher Dodson
Converse, La.
